It’s an Uphill Battle : City Spending $2.5 Million to Anchor Homes

Seven months after watching her hillside neighborhood slump toward Pacific Coast Highway below, Selma Lerner refuses to surrender to gravity.

The Pacific Palisades house she fell in love with seven years ago is cracked and looks as if it’s about to be bowled over by a looming mass above. No one knows yet if the house can be made safe--even with the $2.5 million the city of Los Angeles is spending to fix landslide damage caused by last winter’s rains and to brace the hillside against further slides.

But Lerner is adamant about moving back into her dream house, where from almost any room, she and her husband, George, can watch the porpoises glide through the white water below.

“What terrible thing can happen?” she asks. The answer sits only a few feet away, where the carport remains partially bulldozed by the sliding landmass that struck in February. It does not seem to matter to her.

“Even if they say the house is going into the ocean,” Lerner says, “I’ll go with it.”

The Lerners, who are renting a place just down the street while the city rebuilds the blufftop road in front of their house, are among at least four families dislocated from the enclave of million-dollar homes known as Castellammare. A string of rainstorms last winter saturated the 30- to 50-foot layer of soil and pushed it about five feet downhill, threatening the highway below with teetering debris and breaking three homes so badly that the city spent $150,000 to demolish them in September.

In a show of unusual speed--and, some say, local political might--the city has nearly finished an expensive reconstruction of broken underground utilities and two caved-in streets. At the bluff’s edge on Porto Marina Way, workers are trying to hold back the slippery mass by sinking a string of steel beams 80 feet into the bedrock beneath.

“It’s like holding a sandwich together with toothpicks,” said one supervising engineer.

Officials and residents are waiting to see whether the gambit succeeds in stabilizing a hillside that continued to creep for months after the rains ended in February. About 15 property owners have filed claims against the city, charging that the damaging slides were caused by poor drainage and neglected sewer and water leaks that soaked the hillside even during droughts and that state road crews made matters worse by shaving the hill’s base on PCH over the years.

“The misperception is that this was a natural phenomenon. That’s not true,” said attorney Richard N. Weissfeld, who represents 10 homeowners in claims against the city and Caltrans. “There’s a history of neglect here. Both the city and Caltrans knew they should have been doing something out there, but didn’t.”

The city has yet to respond to the legal claims, but Caltrans rejected them, saying the slides occurred too far above PCH to have been caused by its road projects.

Residents have signed petitions supporting a special neighborhood levy to pay for a system of pumps that would draw ground water from the soil. The city is studying how to distribute costs throughout the densely built neighborhood.

The return of dry weather has brought little relief to homeowners who fled after getting city warnings telling them that their homes were unsafe.

Last winter Yolanda Lebarton was in the middle of a major remodeling job on the 64-year-old home that she bought four years ago on Porto Marina Way. “It was one of those horror stories of someone living through a remodeling,” she recalled. Then the rains hit. “It got worse. It turned into a Jason sequel,” she said, referring to the horror movies.

Lebarton, who produces children’s television programs, has moved with her son to a rented condominium elsewhere in Pacific Palisades, borrowing money from her family and chasing down federal disaster aid. One fund has paid $850 a month in rent, but another grant program has yet to produce a dime, she said. Insurance companies don’t cover slide-related damage, which in Lebarton’s case includes cracks in the foundation, walls and floors.

The turreted house, built in 1929, was part of the original Castellammare subdivision and was once owned by the actor who played Batman’s butler. Since February, it has shifted about 10 feet toward the bluff edge. Thieves have broken in three times, and Lebarton can’t make up her mind whether she’ll keep the place.

“Depending on the day and the mood I’m in, I go either way,” she said.

Other neighbors have given up on hillside living, but not Selma Lerner--not even in the face of her husband’s pleadings to leave the broken house behind. “I don’t want to be sleeping in that house not knowing if the hillside will fall down on us,” George Lerner said. “She picked a magnificent house that has a terrible health record.”

From the broad brick patio, which survived the slides with remarkably few scars, it’s easy to ignore that history. The Lerners’ 180-degree ocean view is the envy of Porto Marina Way, a neighborhood that is expert on such things.

“I wouldn’t trade it for the biggest, most beautiful mansion around,” Selma Lerner said. “I’ve cried my eyes out since we’ve been out, worrying we might not be able to come back.”

Whether building safety officials allow them back depends on the outcome of more geological studies into how much the city repairs and a dewatering system would stabilize the ground, and steps the Lerners can take to reinforce the house against future slides. Under pressure from Councilman Marvin Braude, the city has hurried to rebuild the streets at a pace that bespeaks Braude’s clout and the power of a well-to-do neighborhood that knows how to get things done.

“We’ve spent $2.5 million in six months,” said one official. “It’s hard to spend that much in six months.”

The city has replaced cracked sewer lines and will put new water lines above ground. On Castellammare Drive, the city’s contractor took down three badly damaged homes after residents complained they were attracting vandals and thieves to the neighborhood. The street’s steep downhill edge is now buttressed with a line of beams driven deep into the ground. Four dewatering wells will draw water from the ground once the road work is done.

The most dramatic work is on Porto Marina Way, perched 200 feet above PCH. Engineers hope to stop the edge from falling, using a retaining wall that is held up by 55 giant beams anchored deep below the slide layer with special reinforced cables. Surveyors reported that the slide, which had continued throughout the construction job, appeared to have stopped moving--one sign the braces are holding.

While the city is required to fix the damaged public roads, officials say the work is not designed to secure nearby homes against an active slide that spurred a similar road-reconstruction after a big slide in 1969. Any benefit to affected homes on Porto Marina Way would be “incidental,” said J.W. Cobarrubias, chief geologist for the city’s Building and Safety Department.

“There’s no way to guarantee,” said John Fitton, a geological expert with the city’s Department of Public Works. “It’s like putting the brakes on a locomotive and saying what’s going to happen to the caboose.”

Despite risks, people can’t resist the neighborhood’s scenery--the “white-water” views of crashing surf rank a step above plain old ocean vistas--and its relative closeness to the freeway. Even as tractors repaired last winter’s damage, Beverly Hills real estate agent Terry Ridley was scouting the area in hopes of selling an undamaged house nearby.

She doubted the slides would scare away customers, but offered one bit of advice.

“I would buy a house that I knew had a good foundation,” she said. “Tied into the rock.”

Stopping the Slide

Loosened by the heavy winter rains in February, a section of steep hillside in the Castellammare section of Pacific Palisades slid downslope toward Pacific Coast Highway. To stop further sliding, the Los Angeles Department of Public Works has spent $2.5 million to repair the damage and anchor the landmass to the sandstone bedrock beneath. Here is a simplified look at the project, which is nearly complete.

1. I-Beams: 38 80-foot steel I-beams are sunk vertically into the hill along Porto Marina Way. The beams, spaced eight feet apart, are placed in holes three feet in diameter and encased in concrete.

2. Anchors: Each I-beam is attached to a “tieback” anchor made of five-eigths-inch steel cable and concrete. The tiebacks are inserted in a drilled hole 140 feet deep and 6 inches in diameter. Concrete grout is pumped into each hole and allowed to set; then additional concrete is forced down the hole, rupturing the initial grout at strategic intervals to enlarge the tieback, anchoring it more securely in the sandstone.

3. Sliding Hillside: The 35-foot thick landmass slid about five feet downward and 10 feet outward.