On Edge of Destruction : Aftermath: San Clemente city officials and residents assess damage to the homes sliding down hills, businesses destroyed by heavy rains. And the danger may not be over.

She has a million-dollar view of the Pacific Ocean through her picture windows, but these days, Tamara Dill keeps the shutters closed tight.

She doesn’t want to see what’s no longer there--namely, about 6 feet of back yard that has disappeared down a rain-soaked hill. But inside her house on Calle De Soto, gaping cracks appear every day to remind her that the ground is still moving.

And Dill is one of the lucky ones. Four days after torrential rains finished pounding San Clemente, city officials began to assess the damage. The picture isn’t pretty and the danger may not be over.

“There may not have been the overall devastation that occurred with Hurricane Andrew,” City Manager Michael W. Parness said Friday. “But what is happening to this city and many of our citizens is no different than what happened to the survivors of that hurricane.”

Damage caused by the rains was widespread throughout the city and destroyed businesses and residences alike. Some hilltop homes are still slipping as much as a foot per day. It’s been a hard and costly blow to a small city that’s already suffering from severe economic problems.

So far, the destruction includes:

* About 36 homes declared uninhabitable. Six are considered total losses. Overall, 117 residences have reported some type of damage.

Two businesses wiped out by a flash flood last week when heavy rains caused a storm channel to overflow.

* Unstable bluffs overlooking Pacific Coast Highway. City officials say the heavily traveled road will remain closed for at least another week.

* City streets and sewer drains requiring immediate repair. The costs to a financially strapped city will run into the millions of dollars, say city officials.

Both city officials and residents hope that President Bill Clinton will bail them out by releasing federal disaster relief funds to provide grants and low-interest loans.

“Look around me, look at what’s happened to this place,” said Dill, 26, gesturing with one hand inside her living room. “I don’t know where we’re going to get the money to fix it all. I never thought my future would be in the hands of the President.”

If Dill’s home is in bad shape, Louis Ecker’s home about two blocks away is a disaster.

His house looks as if it had been snapped in half by an earthquake, with one side about four feet lower than the other. Inside, everything is tilted crazily. Kitchen cabinets are smashed to pieces where the roof is caving in. The earth is still sliding about 10 inches each day, Ecker said.

The 77-year-old retiree, who moved into the house with his wife 10 years ago, was away for the weekend when the ground began moving.

“It started with just a little crack,” he said. “Now look at it. My wife always said she thought that the only way we were going to leave this place was feet first. I don’t know what’s going to happen now.”

Built on a series of picturesque hills and canyons, San Clemente is no stranger to landslides. During the last major storm in 1983, 47 ocean view homes were severely damaged, with insurance settlements reaching $8 million. At least six other incidents of slope slippage involving building damage have occurred in the city since that storm.

But city officials say the long series of recent storms utterly saturated the ground, making the damage more widespread and severe. A final heavy soaking last weekend was the final blow.

Jack Stubbs, emergency manager for the city Fire Department, said he can’t remember the city ever getting so much rainfall in such a short period. “And the aftermath can last forever. Six months from now we can have a house go. If we get more (rain), everything starts over again.”

Nobody in City Hall wants to guess what that would do to a city budget that was tightly stretched before the recent storms.

The resort community has a poor retail tax base and has seen budget shortfalls of as much as $900,000 in recent years. In the past decade, many street and storm drain repairs have been delayed in hopes that the city’s economic climate would improve.

The storms could force the city to take drastic steps, such as providing the final push to abolish the Police Department--a move that could save the city up to $2 million annually.

The city manager, who early in the week commented the city was “in a true crisis mode,” estimated that storm repair would cost millions of dollars.

“Or it could run as high as tens of millions,” Parness said. “It’s too early to tell.”

One displaced renter said he not only lost money, but also will be forced to drive his children to school from Oceanside until June.

“When we came home last Sunday, my son found our retaining wall lying on the ground,” said James Shephard, 32, a Marine from Camp Pendleton. “Nearly our entire house was flooded and the roof was collapsing.”

Shephard quickly found another home rental in San Clemente. But by Tuesday, that house was also flooded and uninhabitable, he said. The family wound up renting a home in Oceanside.

“The sad part is that this landlord didn’t even want to give our deposit back,” Shephard said as he loaded the last of the family’s possessions into a rented trailer. “Many things we had were ruined, really messed up. It hasn’t been the greatest week I’ve ever had.”

CLEANING UP

How to repair roofs, fix landscaping, dry carpets damaged by deluge. N1

Widespread Damage 1. Warehouse threatening to fall into storm drain. 2. Flooding demolishes motel, restaurant. 3. Dozens of hillside homes uninhabitable. 4. Flooding forces partial closing of apartment complex.