Since Slide, It’s Been All Downhill : Homes: Residents were left in a financial hole when a hillside moved down on their properties. Insurance firms and the city both refuse to pay for repairs.

Geoff Morgan’s plans to sell his $275,000 home and move his family to their dream house in a rural community near Fallbrook literally changed overnight.

It happened when Morgan and some of his neighbors in the Dana Mesa subdivision here were awakened in March to a chorus of “pops, snaps and creaks.” When they looked outside, they found that the man-made slope behind their homes was slowly sliding away, toppling trees and pushing mud against their houses.

Three days later, the hill between Dana Mesa Drive and Purple Sage Lane was reduced to snarled heaps of concrete, mud and shrubbery, and there was a chasm more than 100 feet long, 50 feet wide and 20 feet deep.

Two of the four families who were evacuated have since been allowed to return to their homes.

But the residents say the slide not only destroyed their back yards but wrecked their lives, and has left them in a financial hole.

Geologists say it may have been coincidental that the hillside came down during the heavy March rains, and that slides in the area are not uncommon.

Insurance companies say the earth movement damage is not covered under homeowner’s policies, and city officials, though sympathetic, say they cannot repair the slope because it is on private property. Three of the homeowners have hired an attorney to look into the matter.

“It’s very upsetting,” said Gladys Leigh, a 75-year-old widow. “It’s more than a nightmare. I have my life savings invested in that house.”

Of the four homes affected by the slide, the Morgans suffered the least damage, but Morgan said the disaster has shattered his family’s dreams.

Morgan, a 35-year-old sheet metal worker, has had to uproot the “For Sale” sign from his front yard, acknowledging that few would want to buy the property because the back yard looks like an abandoned construction site.

“We’ll be stuck here for at least a couple years now because there’s simply no way we can sell it like this,” said Morgan. “And we certainly don’t have the money to fix it.”

For Leigh, the disaster has been especially painful. As she has for more than a decade, she still scours the neighborhood selling Avon products to pay off her mortgage.

“I’ve paid off only two-thirds,” Leigh said. “But I can imagine how difficult it is for the couples whose losses are greater.”

At another home in the area, almost the entire back yard of the house slid away, leaving the dining room at the rear within yards of the edge of the muddy slope.

About a week after the slide, residents received more disheartening news: Their insurance companies and the city said the homeowners would have to foot the bill for any repairs.

San Juan Capistrano Mayor Kenneth E. Friess said the city had already spent $15,000 to provide emergency relief for the residents and on a preliminary geological study.

“We’re sympathetic, but we’re not in a financial position to help them out,” Friess said. “It’s an awful shame that this slide occurred out of the blue in the middle of a drought year. We just don’t know what caused it.”

However, a geo-technical report commissioned by the city stated that the landslide “primarily involved movement of artificial fill overlying natural terrace deposits.”

Gerry Nicoll, a Tustin geologist who has practiced in Orange County for the last 27 years, said he could not speculate what caused the landslide but noted that the region’s “prehistoric landslides” could be traced to a period between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago when the rainfall was 10 times higher than the present amount.

“The rainfall created a special problem,” Nicoll said. “It caused the canyons to be deepened, and the side of the canyon tends to slide into the main canyon. The creeping continues.”

The plight of the Dana Mesa residents is a recurring story in South County.

Eight years ago, 86 houses in San Clemente’s Verde Canyon suffered damage in a spectacular landslide in which an 85-year-old grandmother was inside one of three houses that slid down the canyon. She was not injured, but the city of San Clemente and insurance companies ended up paying $8 million to the homeowners after residents charged that a broken water main was responsible for the slide.

Last week, San Juan Capistrano officials were urging local banks to offer low-interest loans to the Dana Mesa residents to repair the damaged slope. Residents estimate the job would cost tens of thousands of dollars.

But Morgan and his neighbors said they would not be able to repay another loan and instead hired Patrick E. Catalano, the same San Francisco attorney who successfully represented the Verde Canyon residents.

Catalano said last week that he has hired an investigator to find out exactly how the slide occurred.

“Loans are not the answer,” Catalano said. “These people would be wiped out by another loan.”