Precaution, Luck Spared Home in Slide

As workmen drilled into the slopes below on Sunday afternoon, Bruce Sissell and his wife, Diane, counted themselves among the lucky.

Last week, six of the Sissells’ neighbors had to evacuate their homes on Via Alegre in San Clemente when the slopes behind their backyards silently collapsed. About 120,000 cubic yards of earth had fallen away, but the slippage stopped at the Sissells’ property line.

“I was in my bedroom about 15 feet away (from the top of the slope) and I didn’t hear a thing,” Bruce Sissell recalled.

“We lucked out,” he said. “The slide just didn’t want to come down here.”

Concrete Pilings

But it may have been more than luck. Sissell’s mother, Dorothy Sissell, who owns the property, may have had a hand in it.

About 10 years ago, following a smaller slide on the steep slope behind her house, Sissell’s mother had three 35-foot-long, 18-inch-thick concrete pilings reinforced with iron bars sunk into the backyard. The pilings, which sit on four-foot, bell-shaped footings, were anchored to the house’s foundation.

Bruce Sissell, 36, said his less fortunate neighbors had no such reinforcing or supports in the ground behind their homes, which overlook the Shorecliff Golf Course’s sixth fairway.

The slope behind the Sissell house also was the only one that had mature trees whose root systems may have provided additional cohesion for the earth. And replacing the original ice plant on the incline with a lighter-weight ivy may also have helped stave off the slide, he said.

Nevertheless, Sissell acknowledged that “we were very, very fortunate.”

The massive earth movement occurred Wednesday night, ironically while many of the residents were attending a City Council meeting to discuss new cracks on their properties and the earth shifting on the slope in recent days.

The Sissells’ electricity and gas were turned back on Thursday morning, but not his neighbors’.

“The devastating thing for me would have been if I had to move out,” said Diane Sissell, 28. “It’s such an inconvenience for anybody.”

Residents of the six homes west of the Sissells have returned occasionally since the evacuation to retrieve personal belongings. But Bruce Sissell said that city officials have advised that it will take at least 10 days before core samples of soil in the slopes can be analyzed and a decision made on whether the slopes can be shored temporarily.

Supervising the core drilling Sunday for Leighton & Associates, the Irvine geology firm hired by the city, were chief engineering geologist Larry Cann and chief geo-technical engineer Iraj Poormand. But a company spokesman said there had been no further movement since the initial slide.

Police continued Sunday to block traffic from the 200 block of Via Alegre, and an officer was stationed to prevent looting.

Diane Sissell, a real estate saleswoman, praised the quick action of the San Clemente Fire Department in assessing the threat and the continual monitoring of the situation for signs of additional slippage.

“I think you’ll find out that the fact of living in this area, being able to walk out on your back porch and having the view of the ocean, is worth it,” Bruce Sissell said. “I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.”

And, his wife said, “I feel pretty secure here with the pilings.”

Another resident on Via Alegre, Jim Farrand, 53, said he was never threatened by the landslide because his house sits atop a lot cut out of the hillside, while the affected homes across the street were built on fill, he said.

One of Farrand’s neighbor’s homes, which backs up to the slope, has suffered for years from earth movement, with cracks in walls and even a ruptured gas line, he said.

“I don’t think I’d want to live anyplace else,” he said. “Especially not across the street.”