Two Hillside Houses on the Move : Slide: Laguna Beach homes, already evacuated, begin creeping toward each other as the slope beneath them gradually caves in.

Two already evacuated hillside houses began to slide toward each other Friday as the slope on which they were perched slowly caved in.

Officials had evacuated one house and condemned the other on Wednesday when large cracks appeared. On Thursday, fire officials returned to the two houses, on Buena Vista Way and Canyon View Road, at 1 p.m. when a neighbor reported hearing ripping sounds coming from one of the homes, Fire Capt. Bob Scruggs said.

“We came to help escort a lady who was afraid to leave her home, and while we were up there, we noticed slippage” of the other house, he said.

Owners of the house on Buena Vista Way had abandoned it earlier this week after a movement detector installed in the house apparently registered motion, city officials said. The owner could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Fire officials boarded up his house on Wednesday after they found a 25-foot-long, 8-foot-deep and 6-inch-wide crack running the length of the dwelling.

On Thursday, that house buckled more as the home above, on Canyon View Road, began a barely perceptible movement.

The owner of the Canyon View home had been placed in a motel by the American Red Cross. Two houses on either side of that home also suffered damage, and authorities disconnected their power, but Fire Battalion Chief Joe McClure said those homeowners were not being asked to leave.

Late Thursday, officials could no longer detect movement, but they set up a team to monitor the homes into the morning.

City Manager Kenneth C. Frank said city employees would work through the night to clear Buena Vista Way, which was littered with dirt and debris. Geologists were expected to return this morning and begin drilling holes into the ground to gauge its stability, Frank said.

Tom Harper, whose ocean view home was one of the two that suffered some damage, said he began to notice his neighbor’s house “creaking” in the early afternoon.

“It’s really eerie to hear,” he said. “The window was popping.”

Harper said he planned to spend Thursday night in his unlit master bedroom on the first floor, but if he even suspects movement, he added, “I will be up those stairs” and running.

Residents of other homes in the area were evacuated temporarily while authorities disconnected power lines to them as a precautionary measure. Power was later restored to all but the condemned and damaged homes.

Thursday, as geologists measured the cracks on Buena Vista Way, some homeowners and their friends nervously removed belongings to prepare for the worst, they said.

Jeannine Kaplan of Rochester, N.Y., who was visiting Laguna Beach, said she had been happy to get away from the blizzard back East. She got “out of the snow emergency there . . . and into this,” Kaplan said as she helped a friend pile some artwork onto the side of the road.

City and fire officials said they didn’t expect the moving houses to reach the street because the slope was collapsing inward, and the houses were heading toward each other.

The two homes join many others in the county that were destroyed or badly damaged in landslides caused by a series of pounding storms in January and February. In San Clemente, five homes, perching on a bluff overlooking Pacific Coast Highway, were condemned last month. In January, residents of 45 Anaheim Hills homes were evacuated because of continuing land movement, and three Laguna Beach dwellings slipped from their foundations.