El Sereno House Shakes, Rattles and Rolls After Quake

Melissa Hake, a 17-year-old scholar-athlete at Los Angeles’ Wilson High, was hobbling home from school one recent day, using crutches to protect a sprained ankle, when something unexpected came her way.

It was a rock slide that started from, of all places, the neighbor’s house across the street.

Three large stones tumbled at her. One slammed into her good leg, knocking her down and leaving a large bruise.

The Crumbling Home of O’Sullivan Drive had struck again.

It happened on Oct. 28, four weeks after Manuel and Irene Luna’s El Sereno home started cracking apart in the 5.9 earthquake Oct. 1. A freak occurrence, perhaps. But ever since the temblors of October, O’Sullivan Drive has been a freaky place. In all, neighbors say, at least three people have been struck by rocks from the Luna house, though there have been no severe injuries. In the case files of the Los Angeles Building and Safety Department, no one can find a problem quite like it. In 40 years with the department, Mel Bliss, chief of the community safety bureau, says that through quakes, slides and floods, he has never before encountered a home disintegrating bit by bit, triggering little rock slides. “It’s just a unique situation,” Bliss said.

Conflicting Advice

That helps explain why the home, such as it is, has proven so vexing for the Lunas, their neighbors and building inspectors. City officials assert that danger is not imminent, and that it has been the Lunas’ responsibility all along to either repair or demolish the house. The Lunas, in turn, say city inspectors and contractors gave them conflicting advice. Regardless of who is to blame, the neighbors wonder why so little was done in recent months to protect them and their property.

Now, 3 1/2 months after that first jolt, plans to repair the home are moving forward. To neighbors, it’s about time. Foot-wide fissures have tilted a 7-foot stone retaining wall toward the street where children ride skateboards. Another quake, they fear, could turn the home into a killer.

“Believe me,” neighbor Laura Burks said recently, “living next door to this is no fun.” During one aftershock, a rock nicked Burks’ 13-year-old son, Philip.

Among Hardest Hit

Just 5 miles from the quake’s epicenter, O’Sullivan Drive was one of the hardest-hit areas within the Los Angeles city limits. (The worst damage occurred in Whittier.) Several other homes sustained damage, but of them all, the Lunas’ hilltop home was the most worrisome.

After standing firm for more than 50 years, the two-story structure

with the distinctive stone styling was laced with cracks. City workers blocked O’Sullivan Drive with barricades, fearful that vibrations of passing cars would cause further damage.

When the 5.5 aftershock hit Oct. 4, the giant 2 1/2-story stone chimney on the Luna house crashed down into neighbor Marcia Garcia’s front courtyard, causing several thousand dollars’ worth of damage.

The Lunas, who had lived in the house 33 years, moved into their daughter’s home in Temple City.

Soon Manuel Luna began receiving puzzling instructions from city inspectors and private contractors. On Oct. 21, a city inspector wrote up the home as “repairable” and gave the Lunas 30 days to begin corrective work. Later, a different city inspector would recommend demolition, as would a private engineer.

As days passed, aftershocks, rain and wind triggered little rock slides. “Whenever we heard some loud noise,” a neighbor said, “we’d think, ‘Oh, there goes the house.’ ” Motorists repeatedly moved the city’s street barricades, which now simply line the front of the house.

When neighbors complained to building inspectors and Councilman Richard Alatorre’s office, they were told that the Lunas had been served with the fix-it order.

After Melissa Hake got hit, her parents, Tom and Rosemary, were fed up. Trying to make a point, Tom Hake carried one large stone that had fallen from the Lunas’ property into a community meeting to discuss quake damage. He put it on a desk manned by Richard Sanchez, a senior building inspector.

“I took the biggest rock I could find. It probably weighed 60 pounds,” Tom Hake said. “I said, ‘How can we protect ourselves against this?’ ”

‘Has to Be Severe’

The city has the legal authority to demolish a building if it is judged to be an imminent threat to life and property. “It has to be a severe case, beyond any question,” Bliss said. “We don’t do that very often.”

Manuel Luna said he repeatedly tried to hire contractors to make the repairs ordered by the city, but saw several drive up, take a look, then drive away, wary of the task. “We couldn’t get anybody to help,” he said. Finally, with only a few days left before the compliance deadline, a private engineer finally analyzed the home. His judgment: Repair was “not safe or feasible.”

The city soon followed up with a new 30-day order, now recommending demolition though allowing repair as an option. When the Lunas failed to meet that deadline, saying they still could not find a contractor, the city threatened to hire a wrecking crew and bill the Lunas, charging extra for administrative costs.

Under that threat the Lunas recently found a contractor.

Neighbors Sympathize

The neighbors, frustrated by their own encounters with City Hall, tend to sympathize with the Lunas. Marcia Garcia said her frequent calls to Alatorre’s office brought no satisfaction. And the Hakes, having secured a federal loan to repair their quake-damaged home, met long delays in securing building permits. At one point, they were told that their paper work had been lost. At another, they said, a soils engineer promised for two weeks to get to their house--and then went on vacation without doing the inspection.

“The Lunas went through the same thing we did,” Rosemary Hake said.

Bliss suggested that administrative problems resulted from the department’s quake workload. The temblors prompted inspections of more than 8,300 properties within the city.

Alatorre aide Robin Kramer, upon reviewing the case, said the resolution prompted by the demolition order shows that “the system, however wobbly, is working.”

In the meantime, Kramer said, if more rocks come tumbling down and cause damage and injury, the residents on O’Sullivan Drive are not without recourse.

“He’s liable,” Kramer said of Manuel Luna, “and they can sue him.”