Shifting Earth Forces Apartment Evacuations

The drill is familiar: Firefighters evacuating the apartment complex. Residents scrambling to retrieve the bare essentials. Disaster workers rushing to set up a makeshift shelter.

It looked, sounded and--to some--felt like an earthquake.

To about 100 of the residents of the hillside El Sereno apartment complex called the Highlands, it might as well have been one, in slow motion. It began at 12:20 p.m. Saturday, when huge chunks of concrete from the complex’s uppermost parking lot crumbled and sank, threatening to slide down the hill onto a construction site.

One building is so badly undermined that it may have to be razed, according to fire officials. More than 100 residents were evacuated, and they spent Sunday wondering when--if ever--they would sleep under their own roofs again.

Most spent the night in their cars or with relatives. On Sunday, some residents returned to their homes to retrieve belongings before the hillside slid even more. Los Angeles city firefighters, who warned that the earth beneath the buildings seemed unstable, monitored families who made hurried trips inside to grab clothes, food and television sets.

“Even if they say it’s safe, we’re getting out of here,” said Maria Flores, who spent Saturday night with her husband, five children and two dogs in the back of a covered pickup truck. When the parking lot started collapsing, she said, she hustled her children outside, leaving lunch uneaten on the kitchen table.

A day later, her children were munching on oranges and cookies--the only food Flores had salvaged from her apartment--in the pickup shell, trying to stay out of the sun.

Some parents carried out armfuls of children’s clothes and blankets in plastic bags provided by the Fire Department. Some, using their children’s wagons, dragged out videocassette recorders, sneakers and stuffed animals.

Utility workers cut off electricity and gas to the imperiled part of the complex in case the buildings slid off the hill. The owner of the complex had pledged to help residents find temporary housing. Fire officials and the American Red Cross set up a makeshift shelter in El Sereno Junior High School nearby, but few residents slept there Saturday.

“We feel like we’re homeless,” said Jeanette Carinio, who has lived in the complex for 23 years. “We’re scattered like orphans.”

Carinio returned to her apartment to retrieve the $200 in groceries she had purchased just before the earthslide.

The 1994 Northridge earthquake was not as unsettling or as damaging here as this slide has been, Carinio said. “The earthquake, we could survive. This is what we cannot survive.”

Some minor ground shifting continued Sunday as crews tried to shore up the hillside. Fire officials cordoned off the complex and the parking lot, where a sports car and a station wagon sat in the 75-foot-by-25-foot sinkhole.

Investigators had not determined the cause of the earthslide. Fire Battalion Chief Michael Fulmis said that more than a week ago, the Department of Building and Safety had halted the construction project at the bottom of the hill, where workers were excavating to put in a 117-unit complex. The same construction workers were putting up additional shoring at the site when the slide began, Fulmis said.

Property manager Paul Powell said that when he spotted cracks in the pavement in another area of the complex about 10 days ago, he notified city building officials.

“I told them we were going to lose the hill,” he said. Powell added that he never thought the four buildings toward the base of the complex would be in danger. He criticized city officials for failing to foresee safety problems when they approved construction of the parking lot and the new complex below.