Home Sick

Almost like saying goodbye to a friend, Richard and Susan Olsson signed a demolition permit for their condemned house in Laguna Niguel on Monday, and then watched as it was battered apart and pushed down a crumbling hill to join the remnants of four others, all victims of a landslide in March.

As the Olssons looked on from a distance, the canyon echoed with the crashing and crunching of the house as it fell after dozens of swipes by the steel claw of the Hitachi excavator. A segment of roof, a piece of flooring, a window frame, then the living room that afforded the Olssons a coveted valley view--all dropped over the edge of the hill.

“It was a good ol’ house,” said Susan Olsson, holding a video camera to capture the final moments of the onetime $600,000-plus dream house the couple appointed with cherished fixtures, like the $20,000 in flat stone and the specially built white oak pantry. “It takes a year to build and 20 minutes to knock down.”

Although they haven’t lived in the house for eight months, it was difficult to watch it finally fall, Susan Olsson said.

“We had to watch it, for closure,” she said. “It’s like the birth and death of your house. I couldn’t just pull the plug and walk away. We owed it ourselves and we owed it to our home to see this.”

The Olssons were the original owners of the house, built in 1987 by the J.M. Peters Co. on Via Estoril in Niguel Summit, a 1,500-house project by Hon Development of Laguna Hills. They and other residents sued the developers in 1996 because of shifting soil and cracking walls. They evacuated their houses in December 1997 after geologists determined a landslide was imminent.

The slope failed three months later, destroying dwellings at the top and bottom of the hill. At the top, two houses were destroyed and two others were left dangling, falling into the gap within 10 days after the slope collapse. Two others, the Olsson house and a second that has been bought back by developers, were destroyed Monday, and three more may one day be torn down.

At the bottom of the hill, 21 units of the Crown Cove condominiums were destroyed or condemned, upended and crushed by thousands of tons of displaced earth; officials have not yet determined the fate of the remaining 20 units.

Hon Development and Capital Pacific Holdings of Newport Beach, which owns J.M. Peters, face a Sept. 28 trial date before Judge Francisco F. Firmat in Orange County Superior Court in lawsuits filed by the Olssons, other residents who also lost their homes, the Niguel Summit Homeowners Assn., the homeowners association representing Crown Cove condominiums and dozens of other area homeowners affected by the landslide.

“We want some resolution, some closure,” said Richard Olsson, watching the dust slowly settle as his house came down. “This is just the end of another chapter in a continuing nightmare.”

The two houses destroyed Monday were on the edge of the landslide and had to be removed to allow engineers to complete the first phase of work aimed at stabilizing the slope. Crews have installed 64 steel and concrete pillars more than 100 feet deep into bedrock. The pillars and steel cable tiebacks will be used to try to keep the hill from moving farther.

“They need to do that for the city street and for the other houses,” Richard Olsson said. “We can’t stand in the way of that.”

The Olssons were accompanied Monday by their attorney, Robert Balmuth, and former neighbors from four other houses that were lost to the landslide, a group whose members have grown closer through the ordeal.

“There isn’t anybody else--not our brothers or sisters or even our children--who can understand what we’re going through. Only us,” said Dr. Charles Kovan, who lost his house in the initial landslide March 19.

The Olssons, business consultants, have been living in leased housing in Mission Viejo, still required to make mortgage payments on the useless property on Via Estoril. Like their former neighbors and residents of the condos, they are in homeowner limbo: unable to rebuild, unable to buy anew.

Richard and Susan Olsson embraced as the last pieces of their house fell into the gulch. Residents out walking their dogs and neighbors awakened by news helicopters clumped around the homeowners and the newly fallen houses, asking what had happened.

“Is it the Olssons’ house?” asked one spectator who knew the house from neighborhood talk but didn’t know the owners personally.

“Yes,” replied Richard Olsson. “It’s the Olssons’ house.”

“Heartbreaking,” said the passerby.

Said Richard Olsson: “Our hearts are breaking.”