Sherman Oaks House Slides 14 Feet Down Hillside

A vacant house in Sherman Oaks owned by a geologist slid about 14 feet down a hillside Thursday, after rain-soaked ground gave way, city officials said.

“The ground has been saturated from the floods and rains these last few weeks,” said David Keim, a principal building inspector with the city’s Department of Building and Safety. “The slope underneath the house started moving.”

The fallen house in the 3600 block of Oakfield Drive was declared an imminent hazard and will have to be demolished to protect the houses below and nearby, city officials said.

There were no injuries and no other residences were damaged in the slide. City engineers, however, detected additional erosion beneath the house next door and those homeowners were evacuated.

“We’re moving,” said Lila Illes, who lives in the threatened house. “I don’t know where.”

Joseph Cota, the owner of the sliding house, stood by stoically, saying little as city engineers and other officials inspected his damaged property, which he had purchased only a month ago.

His house apparently began moving late Wednesday.

“I kept hearing noises, about 12,” said Illes. “We had no idea what it was. It was pitch black. It was spooky. We decided to get out of bed, get dressed and get out of here.”

The Illeses spent the rest of the night in a hotel and only discovered the source of the noise when they returned the next morning.

Like some other houses that line Oakfield Drive--a steep, winding road near Beverly Glen Boulevard--Cota’s house was supported by steel beams that resemble stilts.

When the slope failed, taking the wood-frame house and its foundation with it, the stilts tilted to the left. By mid-morning Thursday, the house was lopsided, several feet below the street and other houses.

The slide also damaged the street.

“The street has been undermined,” said Nick Delli Quadri, senior structural engineer with the Department of Building and Safety. “It took the soil at the street away.”

Illes and other neighbors suspected that the land beneath the house was unstable. Illes said the land under her own home shifted during the quake. Another neighbor said a three-foot-wide gap between the street and the house, which directly abuts the roadway, appeared after the quake.

“There was undermining with the earthquake plus the rain,” Illes said.

City officials could not confirm reports of previous undermining.

Although the house received some interior damage in the quake, there was no structural damage, Cota said.

“From the earthquake there was not a single broken window,” Cota said. “It was green-tagged after the earthquake.”

According to county records, the 1,600-square-foot house was assessed at $215,576 last year.

In February, the house was owned by an elderly man who lived alone, neighbors said.

“The morning of the earthquake I helped him get out,” said Bruce M. Gleason, who has lived on the street since 1969. “He was trapped.”

Neighbors said the man gave the property to UCLA, which sold it to a private individual.

Because the house occupies such a precarious position, it will be hand-wrecked, using small tools and power tools, to ensure the safety of demolition workers and nearby residences, Keim said. City officials have not determined when the house will be demolished.