Janie Liszewski

Janie Liszewski is Eddie Van Halen's girlfriend and Liszewski also part times as his publicist. She's in the news today as the house that Liszewski and Van Halen share got flooded: well, nearly:

The 52-year-old guitarist had been in Edmonton, Alberta, where his band, Van Halen, had just performed, when a call came in early Monday morning from Los Angeles fire officials.

A broken water main in Studio City sent thousands of gallons of water flowing down Coldwater Canyon Avenue and into Van Halen's yard.

He arrived home from Canada around noon and surveyed the damage.

"It could have been a lot worse," said Janie Liszewski, Van Halen's publicist and live-in girlfriend.

"The pool is buried in mud, the driveway gate is down and some major landscaping is going to be needed to restore the yard to its former self," Liszewski said.

Fire spokesman Cecil Manresa confirmed Van Halen's was the lone home affected by the water, and said sandbags placed around the house prevented any water from entering inside.

After all the disasters that have happened recently, wildfires, earthquakes, plagues of frogs (one of those ismade up) a burst water main is pretty commonplace, don't you think?

Van Halen’s swimming pool disappeared under the deluge, and potted plants and trees were also demolished, his girlfriend Janie Liszewski told the paper. But the house was saved after firefighters fortified it with sandbags, she said.

The couple were not at home when the destruction started shortly after midnight on Monday. They were in the Canadian city of Edmonton for a reunion concert the night before by Van Halen’s eponymous band.

They returned on Monday to survey the damage, which was caused by a broken air valve on a water main, the paper said. It sent torrents of water through the streets of the bucolic Coldwater Canyon neighborhood, but Van Halen’s property was the only one affected by the flood.

It's also a little odd to be worried about a swimming pool being flooded, isn't it?

But there is a solution!

But that's what Eddie Van Halen has to deal with today, after a water main burst near his home in LA yesterday and sent thousands of gallons of mud and debris crashing down Coldwater Canyon and into his garden, not affecting anyone else's property. Although neither Eddie Van Halen or his girlfriend were at home when the mud-attack hit, Van Halen's girlfriend Janie Liszewski - who also moonlights as his publicist - had this to say:

"It could have been a lot worse. The pool is buried in mud, the driveway gate is down and some major landscaping is going to be needed to restore the yard to its former self."

It's also been reported that the only thing which saved Eddie Van Halen's house from the accident was the quick-thinking firefighters who threw down sandbags to protect it. But coming so soon after Flea's house burnt down in a freak Malibu wildfire, how are these under-fire celebrities going to protect themselves from the cruel hand of Mother Nature?

We think we have an answer, and that answer is a man-for-man population swap with Basildon. It's so obviously - Basildon has everything that the modern millionaire celebrity needs, from plans to build one of Europe's largest wetland nature reserves to a shopping centre with a Claire's Accessories and a Bon Marche. Plus the current population of Basildon would get to go to LA and have their houses burnt down by a succession of natural disasters. We wouldn't be against that, to be honest.