Slide Claims Against 2 Cities Flood City Halls : Damages: Homeowners in Dana Point and San Clemente have demanded millions of dollars from their towns in the legal actions that keep the door open for later lawsuits. Cities deny liability.

The cities of Dana Point and San Clemente have been flooded with claims filed in the past week by homeowners demanding millions of dollars in damages and alleging that the cities were partly responsible for the massive February landslide that claimed five oceanfront homes and threatens others.

Dana Point alone was hit with 29 claims, including 18 that ask for damages in excess of $1 million each, said Andy Anderson, the city’s emergency services coordinator.

San Clemente City Atty. Jeffrey M. Oderman said Tuesday that his city also received a number of claims from homeowners, although he did not know how many.

Officials in both communities called the devastating slide unfortunate, but said the cities are not to blame. The Feb. 22 slide destroyed five bluff-top homes along La Ventana, endangered 45 others and has left a 30-foot pile of rubble covering a vital one-mile stretch of Pacific Coast Highway, which remains closed to all traffic.

The bluff overlooking the highway is in San Clemente, while beachfront property below, as well as the highway and adjacent Santa Fe railroad tracks are within the city limits of Dana Point.

Anderson said the bluffs in the slide area were an accident waiting to happen. “The geologic structure of the slope was prone to failure,” he said.

The claims, many of them filed through the office of San Diego attorney Patrick E. Catalano, suggest that the cities “failed to adequately investigate the condition of the hillside” and installed water systems that leaked into the soil and contributed to the slide.

Oderman, San Clemente’s attorney, said the slide was caused in large part by excessive rain last winter. The city has tested water and sewer lines on the bluff tops for leaks and found them functioning properly.

“It’s an unfortunate situation, but not one the city feels it has a legal liability for,” Oderman said.

The claims were filed this past week to preserve their legal rights to file damage suits in the future, homeowners said. By law, homeowners have six months from a slide date to file a claim or not have any legal recourse later, Anderson said.

Nat Rogers, a San Clemente homeowner whose property sits atop the La Ventana bluff but was not directly damaged, praised the work the cities have undertaken since the slide. But he was forced to file a claim to protect himself and his property values, he said.

“With a deadline of six months, you either file or you are a fool,” said Rogers, who has lived on the bluff for 17 years. “We feel the cities have been wonderful and ought to be commended. All the agencies are working very hard not to have any lawsuits occur.”

The landslide, which began along the bluff’s edge, spilled 75 feet down the hillside and across Coast Highway and the railroad tracks, temporarily halting all commuter and freight service to San Diego.

The tracks have since been cleared, but the cities are still awaiting a final engineering plan and funding from the Federal Highway Administration to clear the highway, which is a vital evacuation route for the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

The homeowners met with city, federal, state and Caltrans representatives Monday at Dana Point City Hall to discuss the progress on the project, said James F. Holloway, San Clemente’s director of community development. Federal funds will be used to clear the highway, but the homeowners will have to come up with some of their own money to restore their properties, Holloway said.

“Under federal guidelines, the mission is to clear the road and make it safe,” Holloway said. “But that doesn’t mean building back private property for the sake of building back private property.”

Holloway said the claims were discussed at the meeting “more or less as an aside.” Most of the residents were just protecting themselves by filing claims, Holloway said.

“I understand where they are coming from if they have done this to protect their rights down the line,” Holloway said.

Holloway said the cities and the other agencies have two plans to restore the bluffs using a combination of retaining walls and underground cables. He declined to estimate a cost, but said it would probably be less than the $2.8 million price tag suggested last month.

“It’s a very complicated deal,” Holloway said. “All the solutions turned out to be less than the original estimates. But there is still a gap between the preferred solution and what the federal funding would provide. We still need to figure out how to fill that gap.”