Road to Recovery : Rebuilding of Bluff Top Begins--With Tearing Down

The first visible step in an excruciatingly slow process to repair a 17-month-old landslide and clear a vital stretch of Pacific Coast Highway began Tuesday with the tedious chore of dismantling three damaged bluff-top homes.

San Clemente city officials said the demolition would have to be done painstakingly, piece by piece and without the help of bulldozers, because the three damaged homes on La Ventana are still hanging precariously over the 50-foot bluff.

But city officials in both San Clemente and Dana Point remain confident that the $3.1-million project to clear the homes, rebuild the bluff top and clear the 300-foot section of debris-filled highway will be finished by January at the latest.

“We are going to even try and improve on that,” said Mort August, Dana Point’s director of public works. “I’d like to give the community a Christmas present. This has had a real impact on Dana Point.”

The only remaining nettlesome issue that could slow the project is the signing of waivers releasing the California Coastal Commission from any liability for possible future slides on the bluff top, August said. But he believes the waivers will be signed sometime this week.

“This is really a minor issue . . . but it is potentially holding up the works,” August said. “I think we’ll be able to get started.”

The two cities are jointly supervising the reconstruction project because the landslide affected them both.

The slippage on Feb. 22, 1993, ruined eight bluff-top homes in San Clemente and caused 40,000 tons of debris to fall onto Pacific Coast Highway in Dana Point, where the roadway has been closed ever since.

Of the damaged homes, three are in the way and must be dismantled before the frail slope can be repaired and the highway reopened. The dismantling began Tuesday.

“Workers will be moving in a very careful manner, more or less by hand” said Trang Huynh, a San Clemente building official. “We don’t want them to shuffle anything down the slope. It would be very dangerous to go in there with heavy equipment.”

Homeowner Peter Shikli, who lost his three-bedroom, 2,000-square-foot home in the slide, expressed his satisfaction Tuesday that progress is finally being made.

“It’s been about a year and a half of trying to restore the neighborhood,” said Shikli, 44, the owner of a computer software company who has relocated to a San Clemente apartment. “It looks like we are moving in a more positive direction. . . . This looks like it’s going to be a very first-rate project from here on.”

The federal government will pay about 88% of the $3.1-million project cost through special emergency funds provided by the Federal Highway Administration, August said. The bulk of the remaining costs will be paid by the California Office of Emergency Services, with the homeowners chipping in $200,000, August said.

The city of Dana Point has already spent nearly $600,000--mostly on design and soils work--to get the project to this point, but that will be reimbursed, August said.

“If things work the way I penciled them out, there should be little if any money coming from the general funds of San Clemente and Dana Point,” August said. “Right now, it shouldn’t directly impact the city coffers. I have no reason to suspect otherwise at this point.”

The Dana Point City Council is expected on July 12 to approve a reimbursable $2.1-million contract for the bluff-top reconstruction project with Santa Ana-based Sukut Construction Inc., whose bid was lowest of four that ranged up to $3.9 million. August said the project includes landscaping the bluff with native plants and installing an inch-thick concrete retainer on the bluff face, sculpted to “look like a natural bluff.”