Sliding House in Anaheim Is Demolished by the City

A large excavator ripped apart a doomed, $2.5-million Anaheim home Thursday to help prevent a neighboring house from slipping down a slowly collapsing hillside.

Workers scrambled to finish the work before an approaching storm could exacerbate the landslide in Anaheim Hills that also has claimed a house that was under construction.

Demolition crews hired by the city took about an hour to raze the 5,000-square-foot stucco house. Anaheim officials had declared a local emergency Wednesday, indicating at the time that they would give the owners of 365 Ramsgate Drive two days to hire their own wrecking crew.

But as exterior cracks appeared in a neighboring house, 373 Ramsgate, and meteorologists forecast 2 inches of rain through Saturday, city officials said Thursday that they needed to move more urgently.

By razing the house, officials hoped to reduce pressure on the slope and provide access for earthmovers to shore up the hillside.

“The homeowners at 365 Ramsgate were visibly shaken,” said John Nicoletti, city spokesman. “They still had property and personal belongings in the home, but it was too unstable for them to enter and save any of it.

“This needed to be done in order to prevent further loss of property,” he said, “and we didn’t think we would be able to work safely with the upcoming rains. It was an extremely unfortunate situation.”

Debate intensified over what caused the landslide. City geologists said that fill-dirt brought in years ago was the culprit, while an attorney for the owners of 365 Ramsgate contended that an ancient landslide reactivated by last month’s record deluge was at fault.

The home was the first to begin shifting and was declared uninhabitable last month. The unfinished structure to the north was red-tagged last week. The house at 373 Ramsgate was red-tagged Saturday after the landslide accelerated rapidly.The slide at the top of Ramsgate is within the gated Royal Ridge community, above the Riverside Freeway in Santa Ana Canyon.