Cracks Seen in Homes Near MTA Tunneling

In a scene reminiscent of problems previously witnessed along Lankershim and Hollywood boulevards, three Cahuenga Pass property owners are reporting cracks in the floors, walls and ceilings of homes directly above the route of Metro Rail subway tunneling in the Santa Monica Mountains.

The homes, on the south side of the 3900 block of Kentucky Drive, are situated 100 to 120 feet above the site where a giant tunnel-digging machine became trapped in a tricky stretch of soft shale during the Fourth of July holiday, and remained immobilized for six weeks.

The homeowners said the cracks began to appear in the past month and have widened in recent days.

“I’m noticing new ones every day,” said Marian V. Betts, a 50-year resident of the hillside neighborhood. “I’m glad my husband isn’t still alive because he’d have a fit.”

Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokeswoman Rae James said none of the Kentucky Drive homeowners had yet filed claims with the agency. She said MTA construction executives and engineers who examined the outside of homes from the street Friday believe the visible cracks are “preexisting” conditions.

She added, however, that “there should be no doubt that if we are the cause of any damage, we will fix it.”

In Betts’ home, quarter-inch-wide cracks that appeared to be fresh crisscross the ceiling of a recently painted back bedroom, as well as the walls of her bedroom, patio and the tiled floor of a bathroom.

Two closet doors have jammed in recent weeks, she said. After asking a reporter to close one of the doors during an interview Thursday, she brandished the crowbar required to reopen it.

Betts said a contractor has told her that there’s not a level surface in the house.

MTA spokesman Jim Smart said an agency public affairs official had offered to put Betts up at a local hotel while tunneling progressed under her home 10 days ago. Betts turned down the offer, he said.

“It is not right to characterize us as indifferent or uncaring,” he said.

In 1994, along Hollywood Boulevard, and earlier this year on Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood, similar cracks appeared as well as tilted walls and floors. Officials determined the damage was caused by ground subsidence in the wake of subway tunneling 60 feet below the streets.

Excavation experts say that gaps left in tunnel walls by digging machines and not completely packed by miners with concrete or blocks of timber are eventually filled by dirt falling from above. The settlement can take weeks, months or even years to work its way to the surface. Experts say that if the dirt that slips away was supporting a building, walls can shift, buckle or crack.

MTA officials have long asserted, however, that they expected no such subsidence in the Santa Monica Mountains, where the agency is digging twin tunnels, 100 to 900 feet beneath the surface, that will one day ferry Red Line subway passengers from Studio City to Hollywood.

The officials said the rock under the mountains would be much harder than the sand and gravel found in the floors of Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley.

Soon after tunneling began, though, the agency discovered that the stretch of rock under Kentucky Drive was soft, unstable and highly fractured. Inspectors repeatedly recorded small cave-ins and gaps in one tunnel’s walls and roof in the weeks before the 300-foot-long digging machine finally became trapped.

The front of the machine was lodged beneath Fredonia Drive; much of the trailing gear was under Kentucky.

Kentucky Drive homeowners are convinced that the tunneling has affected the ground that appears to be sagging around their houses.

“When we expressed concerns at community meetings that our homes might be in jeopardy from tunneling, the MTA told us there was no way,” said Barnett Williams, who lives next door to Betts. “But now we know that was a lie.”

Williams, who owns two fast-food franchises, said he and his wife have heard “grinding” noises since the start of summer, and he complains that the vibrations and other “booming” construction noises wake them up at night. Tunnel construction usually proceeds 24 hours a day, six days a week.

But those inconveniences, he said, pale next to the cracks in his home.

“I came back from Pittsburgh one night recently and could not believe what I was seeing,” he said.

A third Kentucky Drive resident, Pete Arata, said vibrations from tunneling also disturb him and his 75-year-old grandmother as they try to sleep. Long, fresh-looking cracks are evident not just in the walls of their home, but in the surface of their unpaved driveway. One driveway crack swallowed most of a 36-inch ruler.

“This is driving my grandma crazy. She wants to move, but doesn’t think she can sell the house now for half what it is worth,” Arata said.

In the spring, the MTA settled a lawsuit by Hollywood hills residents opposed to tunneling by agreeing to provide $200,000 insurance policies to owners of property 1,000 feet on either side of the tunnel alignment.

In addition, the MTA agreed in a consent decree to hire a tunnel monitor acceptable to themselves and critics by Aug. 5. The monitor, according to Rocky Rushing, an aide to state Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), was intended to be residents’ “policeman” on the project, ensuring that tunneling was proceeding safely.

Williams and other homeowners complain, however, that they have not yet received the insurance policies. And Rushing said the MTA has failed to produce a final contract for the monitor, a Los Angeles-based tunneling expert, so he has yet to begin work.

An MTA spokesman confirmed Friday that the agency has not finalized its homeowner insurance or tunnel monitor contracts.

The apparent damage to the homes was quickly seized on by two longtime political opponents of the subway, Hayden and Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, an MTA board member.

Hayden called it “another instance of the agency’s blatant disregard for people and property.” Antonovich declared that “like a giant weed, the subway destroys everything in its path--cracked homes, sinking streets, sinking freeways and sinking bridges. . . .”

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Ground for Complaints

Homeowners along the MTA tunnel route are alleging that tunneling work is causing the homes to crack. Tunnels are about 120 feet below the houses in this section of the hills.