Another Chunk of Bluff Slips, Illustrating a Fact of Life

Dale Dillon had just announced that a 1 1/2-mile stretch of Coast Highway north of San Clemente would reopen within the hour when a new chunk of the bluff gave way, depositing more rock and dirt on the roadway Wednesday afternoon.

Dust from the latest slide hadn’t even settled, when Dillon, a county official, turned to a group of nearby workers. “All bets are off,” he said. “Mother Nature isn’t cooperating.”

It’s a fact of life that motorists and homeowners in north San Clemente and Capistrano Beach have known for years.

The sandstone and clay bluffs, rising sharply about 100 feet above the two-lane highway, are prone to give way at a moment’s notice. Wind, rain and time have weakened the bluffs, which tower over the roadway and a narrow band of homes on the beach below.

Shortly after 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, nearly 2,000 cubic yards of dirt broke loose and spilled across Coast Highway just north of Camino Capistrano. No one was hurt, but five homes on the bluff top lost portions of their back yards. The highway was closed for more than 35 hours, forcing traffic to be rerouted around the area. It was finally reopened to through traffic Wednesday night, but Dillon said there are no guarantees that the bluffs won’t slip again.

“This is the fourth slide of this magnitude in the last 15 years and there’s really no way of telling what caused it,” said Dillon, chief of public facilities operations for the county’s Environmental Management Agency. “More than likely, it’s probably nature running its course.”

That was little comfort Wednesday to the five homeowners who lost 10 to 20 feet of their yards and in two cases, lost portions of concrete patios.

“It was just a shock. It was like someone took a big bite out of my patio,” said Edward Makasjian after inspecting the damage to his home in the 2800 block of La Ventana for the first time on Wednesday.

The semi-retired real estate agent, who lives in Downey and plans to move full time into the San Clemente home with his wife this summer, said he plans to rebuild the patio, and will be “content with what is left of his yard.” But he believes the city should erect some type of retaining wall along the edge of the bluff to prevent another slide.

San Clemente officials, however,

mailed letters to the five residents on Wednesday, advising them to hire private geologists to evaluate the damage to their yards and make recommendations on appropriate measures to stabilize the slope below their homes. Huynh Trang, a city building inspector, said the homeowners actually own the slope and therefore are responsible for taking corrective action, if necessary, to stabilize it.

“It’s up to the homeowners,” Trang said. “Obviously, once they settle on a plan they must get city approval to make those improvements.”

The cause of the slide may be impossible to determine but moisture is often a factor, Dillon said. Residents living on top of the bluff often over-water their yards, and the excess moisture easily makes its way through the porous sandstone below. But when the water hits a layer of impervious clay, it begins to move laterally, causing the sandstone to slip with it.

In the area around the slide, portions of the bluff at varying heights appeared wet Wednesday.

“That clay gets as slick as wet concrete,” he said. “And the slope just gives.”