As workers cleared the roadways ahead of the afternoon commute, Van Halen faced a daunting clean-up on his property, where mud and debris flowed 300 feet down a steep incline, filling the swimming pool but stopping short of the home.

The guitarist who started his eponymous rock band with his brother, Alex, in the 1970s, returned home from a Canadian tour stop and found a muddy swamp where his pool used to be.

"You're tired, you're beat up, you come back to find your backyard completely wasted," said his publicist and girlfriend, Janie Liszewski.

Liszewski, who lives in the home with Van Halen, said firefighters broke the news by phone before sunrise when the group was still on tour in Edmonton, Alberta. The brothers, together with Van Halen's son Wolfgang, reunited this year with original singer David Lee Roth.

Liszewski said Van Halen's reaction when he saw the muddy goop covering the backyard, was "Where's the pool?"

"The pool, I don't even know how to describe it. It's non-existent. It's mud," she said, adding that her potted plants and trees were also demolished. Still, she said, if not for the firefighters placing sandbags to protect the house from mud and debris, "it could have been a lot worse."

Van Halen's residence was the only one affected by the rupture.