3 O.C. Families Evacuated as Hillside Slips

City officials moved quickly Monday to evacuate three families as a destabilized hillside undermined their $300,000 homes, threatening them with collapse.

As the curious gathered to the sound of a house breaking up, residents on the hilltop above the fractured residence emptied swimming pools to reduce the weight on the mysteriously fragile ground. Throughout Monday residents and city officials watched helplessly to see if a 100-yard-long fissure on the looming hillside would widen and affect other homes.

By evening, city engineers recommended that the house owned by Paul Filipowicz, a 42-year-old loan officer, be demolished. It was beyond repair and threatened to fall over onto a neighboring residence.

“I keep thinking this is a nightmare and I’m going to wake up and have my home again,” said Filipowicz’s wife, Sue. “But it’s a nightmare that doesn’t go away.”

Officials, facing their second landslide in the city in the past 12 months, huddled on the small cul-de-sac to the background sounds of the Filipowicz home being torn apart.

Filipowicz said he believed a leaky swimming pool on the hilltop above his home had caused the problem, but city officials said what led to the landslide, the resultant 6-foot-deep fissure and the collapse of part of the hillside remained a mystery.

“Quite honestly, we don’t know what has happened here,” said City Engineer Bill Huber. “We can see obvious signs of movement in the hillside. We are bringing in geologists to advise us.”

Officials cordoned off a section of the street, Calle Lucana, installing portable floodlights and placing city work crews there around the clock, said Ron Sievers, director of public works. The street is about a mile west of Mission San Juan Capistrano.

Professional movers and city crews worked frantically Monday to empty the Filipowicz house as it teetered on the edge of collapse. The family’s belongings were hastily stacked in the street, but officials halted the salvage effort as the condition of the home became more perilous.

The Filipowiczes’ next-door neighbor, Nita DiSchino, fought back tears as she, her son and her daughter began emptying their own home. Earlier Monday, her patio was crumpled by the earth movement, but her most pressing danger is the possibility that the Filipowicz home will fall onto hers.

Monday evening, city officials ordered a third homeowner, an elderly woman, to leave her residence next door to the DiSchinos. Her name was not immediately available.

While city officials insist that the slide is a mystery, geologists said Monday that landslides in San Juan Capistrano are not uncommon.

“This soil readily absorbs waters and is very susceptible to slippage after a period of rainfall or heavy watering,” said Bruce Clark, an engineer with the Irvine geological firm of Leighton & Associates, which has done geotechnical work in Orange County for the last 30 years.

The area is on bedrock known as the Capistrano Formation, which extends from Mission Viejo to north Camp Pendleton. The area was formed 7 million years ago when the ocean receded, leaving sandy silt and clay deposits.

Clark said the majority of the 60 landslides that have caused $50 million in damage in Orange County since 1966 have occurred in the Capistrano Formation.

The most visible geologic sign of collapse above Calle Lucana was the crescent-shaped, 100-yard-long fissure, which ran generally horizontally across the face of the slope.

The Filipowiczes said signs of the landslide were first evident two months ago when cracks appeared in the walls of their two-story, custom-built home, which is at the bottom of a hill 75 feet high.

Throughout the day, the curious crowded the street to watch as wood siding fell from the Filipowicz house, seemingly torn from it by an invisible hand.

Two homeowners on the hilltop emptied their swimming pools, while praying that the slide would not bite further into their back yards. The collapsing earth there has broken two fences and cracked a pool deck on Via Alano, but the houses are not threatened, Huber said.

Terri Parker, who lives in one of the houses overlooking the Filipowiczes’, said her family is shaken by the event.

“This used to be a slope, now it’s a ledge,” Parker said, pointing to the scar in the hillside. “It’s getting so much deeper than it was. This is excitement of the wrong kind, as far as I’m concerned.”

The evacuation of Parker’s neighbors recalls a similar incident last March when three families were ordered to leave their homes after a landslide toppled trees, shattered retaining walls and tore a chasm into a hillside in the Dana Mesa subdivision about a mile west of Calle Lucana.

Two of the three families there have since returned to their homes, covering the damaged slope with tarpaulins to try to prevent further erosion.

On Monday, one of the affected Dana Mesa homeowners said she sympathized with the latest victims. “It’s terrible for this to happen to anyone,” said Gladys Leigh. “I don’t wish for anyone else to go through this tragedy.”

The city has refused to pay damage claims filed by Leigh and her two neighbors. Leigh said residents of Dana Mesa are planning to sue the city, which has refused to repair the slope above their homes.

City officials said slide damage to homes built on slopes that fail is a homeowner’s responsibility, not the city’s.

Talking about the latest slide, city engineer Huber said the city will “continue to monitor the situation and provide what services we can. I can’t really say much more . . . until we have a full geotechnical report.”

The Filipowicz and the DiSchino families, who continued their vigil on the street Monday night, had made arrangements to sleep at homes of friends.

Paul Filipowicz saluted the work of the neighbors who had come to his aid.

“I can’t say enough about the people around here,” he said. “This is the best neighborhood in the world, as far as I’m concerned.”

Hillside Breaks Away

Three homes in San Juan Capistrano were ordered vacated by the city as a collapsing hillside undermined the structural integrity of the residences. Mystified city officials called in geologists to investigate why the hill is shifting. Signs of the slide appeared two months ago as cracks developed in one home. Late Monday, walls of the homes had bellied out, and structural members had shifted.

1. Gravity: The steeper a slope, the greater its potential to slide.

2. Layer composition: Rock and soil that retain water, such as clay-type soil, undermine slope stability. The soil in the San Juan Capistrano area has moderate to very high porosity and is therefore capable of high water retention. That increases weight and leads to slippage.

3. Water: Excess moisture can be caused by several things, including overwatering of lawns and plants, badly maintained drains, broken landscape watering devices, and cracked swimming pools, spas, and sewer and other types of water lines. It can cause soil to lift and become unstable or slide away because of too much weight.

4. Soil preparation: Ground that is inadequately prepared before homes are built--insufficiently compacted, for example--is more susceptible to movement.