Mystery Slide Dumps House Onto Street : 2 Injured; City Orders Residents Nearby to Leave

A $350,000 hillside home, dumped off its foundation by a mysterious earth movement, slid down a steep slope in the Los Feliz district with six people trapped inside Saturday afternoon and crumpled into the street, injuring a 63-year-old woman and her granddaughter.

City officials ordered six nearby homes evacuated until a geologist could determine whether they were also in danger. Inhabitants of four were allowed to return later Saturday night.

The collapse began about 2:30 p.m. when the hillside behind the house at 3583 Amesbury Road began sliding toward the street, said John Mirhij, 77, who was in the house with his wife, three grandchildren and a maid.

“It was like an avalanche,” said a neighbor, Joan Watt. “It started with a couple of little rocks off the back of the hill, then all of a sudden, va-voom, and the hill just folded up. It was a miracle they got out alive.”

The slide burst through a retaining wall and dirt and large rocks cascaded into the rear of the house.

‘Like an Earthquake’

“Everything was coming down into the house like an earthquake,” Mirhij said. Walls parted from the roof and “we could see the sky,” he said.

Floors and walls tilting at many angles kept him from moving, he said.

“The floor was full of broken glass,” he said. “My wife tried to escape through the door, but everything fell on her. She was held up by all the things falling on her,” which cut her face, he said.

Mirhij’s wife, Genevieve, 63, was taken to Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital with a broken ankle, a fire department spokesman said. A hospital spokeswoman said she had asked that her condition not be revealed.

Her granddaughter, Lina Shammas, 3, was treated at the scene for cut feet and turned over to relatives, fire officials said.

Also in the house were a maid and two other granddaughters, Rania and Maya Shammas, 6 and 4. They were not seriously injured.

Owners Abroad

Mirhij said the house has been owned for about five years by his daughter and son-in-law, physicians Najwa and John Shammas. Mirhij and his wife were caring for their grandchildren while the parents attended a medical conference in Cairo, Egypt.

Fire Department spokesman Pat Patterson said the earth behind the Shammas’ house appeared to have slumped about eight feet and the house had been shoved about 10 to 12 feet forward.

The cause of the earth movement was a mystery to fire officials.

Some residents said they had heard rumors of water leaking from city mains in the area recently. Fire Department Battalion Chief Alan Schroeder said firefighters found no signs on the newly exposed earth of the slope that it had been undermined by leaking water, but they did not rule out the possibility.

Neighbors, attracted by the noise, ran into the street and passed the children hand to hand through windows out of the dangerously unstable ruins, witnesses said. Firefighters found Mrs. Mirhij in the wreckage “of what normally would have been the entry way” by the front door, said Fire Capt. Mike Littleton.

They found Mirhij, unharmed, in the master bedroom, where “huge boulders the size of half a car came into the back of the house,” said fireman Buzz Clark

“It was like the haunted house at Knotts Berry Farm, with the walls and floors so crooked that you got very disoriented after awhile,” Clark said. “I found the gentleman trying to crawl up the floor.”

Wanted to Stay

Littleton said, “We had considerable trouble convincing him (Mirhij) to leave the house at first, that it was dangerous to stay, because he was so intent on recovering valuables from the bedroom.” Firefighters later retrieved a briefcase from the house for Mirhij.

The collapse buried a new Mercedes Benz and a new Cadillac in a garage under the house.

The city Department of Building and Safety sent a geologist to investigate the slope. Citing the possibility that the slide could continue, fire officials ordered the evacuation of two houses flanking the wreckage and four houses on the slope above it, occupied by about about a dozen people.

Residents of the homes on the upper slope said they were allowed to return later Saturday night