San Clemente Slide Leaves 7 Houses on Edge of 20-Foot Cliff

Residents of seven houses on a bluff overlooking the Shorecliff Golf Course in San Clemente were told to leave their homes Thursday after a massive landslide Wednesday night left the structures perched on the edge of a 20-foot escarpment.

The slide, which involved an estimated 100,000 cubic yards of earth, occurred about 10 p.m. Wednesday, according to residents in the 200 block of Via Alegre, a neighborhood of ocean-view homes valued at $180,000 to $200,000.

No one was injured, but gas and water lines were turned off as a precautionary measure. Electricity remained on. The cause of the slide had not been determined Thursday night.

“We have reports from two geologists telling us the homes cannot be considered safe until a series of test borings are made,” said Fire Chief Tom Dailey, who ordered the evacuation. He said the residents would be asked to leave “immediately.”

Floyd M. Cate, president of the Assn. of Shorecliff Residents, said that earth behind two homes on the block evidently had been “slipping a little” for some time and cracks had appeared in the buildings.

One homeowner, Lee Hambleton, of 216 Via Alegre, said that he and his wife had attended a City Council meeting Wednesday night at which there were discussions about cracking and earth-shifting on the slope in recent days.

“When we got home from the meeting, we went out back and there was nothing there,” he said.

A section of the bluff 100 feet long had collapsed, taking with it the patios of two homes. The slippage is threatening to encroach another 10 to 20 feet into the property beneath the other buildings, according to Beach Leighton, of Leighton & Associates, Irvine geologists hired by the city.

Before the evacuation, residents met Thursday afternoon and agreed that they would move out if told to do so, Cate said.

“All of them have places to stay,” Cate said. “Some have motor homes, some have other residences, and several local people have offered accommodations.”

Also at the meeting were Darrel Spence, one of the owners of Estrella Properties, which owns Shorecliff Golf Course and some of the affected home sites; representatives of the Forster Ranch, which also has interests in the area, and Garry Nicoll, a geologist who has studied the slopes behind Via Alegre for several years.

It was at the recommendation of Leighton & Associates and Nicoll that the decision to evacuate was made, Dailey said.

Nicoll said that at least part of the slide occurred over a man-made fill area that had been approved as a building site by the city many years ago, before more stringent compacting regulations were enacted.

San Clemente has experienced many landslides in recent years. The last major slide destroyed 10 homes on Dec. 30, 1983, in Verde Canyon, about two miles from the site of the incident Wednesday night.

A lawsuit by 87 Verde Canyon homeowners who claim the city was negligent in failing to repair a ruptured water main that contributed to the slide is pending in Orange County Superior Court.

Many of the homeowners also have sued insurance firms, claiming that they acted in bad faith in failing to pay full benefits on homeowners’ policies.

In May, heirs of Helen Aalbersberg, whose East Avenida Cordoba home was severely damaged, filed a separate lawsuit against the All West Insurance Co. The heirs claimed that Aalbersberg was so emotionally distraught by the firm’s failure to provide prompt and proper insurance benefits that she took her own life July 23, 1985.

The development of Verde Canyon took place in 1965, before the city first required geologic reports before residential building, according to papers in the lawsuit by the 87 homeowners.

Lawyers for the city, whose insurance coverage for such incidents totaled $20 million, have denied any responsibility for the slide. They claimed that some residents overwatered their property, leading to ground movement on 26- to 40-degree slopes that were the site of an ancient landslide.

In December of 1978, a landslide farther up the same canyon in which Wednesday’s slippage occurred threatened numerous mobile homes, and five of them had to be moved away from a 60-foot fissure.

In that incident, residents said there were loud noises “like sonic booms” when the earth collapsed. But in Wednesday’s slide, “we didn’t hear a thing,” said Don G. Habig and Tim Nugent of 214 Via Alegre.

“We were in a room about 15 feet away from the back edge of our patio,” Nugent said. “There just wasn’t any noise from the slide.”

Dailey said that the test borings will be done either today or Saturday and that the results will determine the duration of the evacuation order.

Times staff writer John Spano contributed to this story.