Officials Wary of U.S. Aid for Slide Victims

Phyllis and Gary LaCombe survived the mudslide that destroyed their Russian River home last winter. But they have yet to emerge from the bureaucratic maze they entered the night a wall of mud knocked their house from its foundations and sent the LaCombes fleeing.

Even as this winter’s rains begin, the LaCombes and more than 150 other California families still are waiting to see whether local officials accept a federal offer to buy slide damaged or destroyed homes across the state.

When the federal government offered $22 million last month to help buy out California landslide victims, state officials rejoiced. Washington has helped buy out flood victims for years, but this was the first time it had ever made such an offer to landslide victims.

But the offer came with a big caveat: Local governments from Orange County to Humboldt would have to take title to the properties, demolish the structures and agree to leave the land in a natural state forever. Local officials are hesitating, fearful that their counties or cities will be legally liable if the land later gives way and slides cause further damage.

It is a program that has worked in the Midwest, where the federal government has for years bought out property owners in flood plains on the condition that local governments take title to the land and promise never to develop it again. But it is a lot riskier, California officials say, to take title to active landslides.

“We told our council publicly that this was a ‘buy a landslide program, and our question was: who would want to?’ ” says Tim Casey, city manager of Laguna Niguel, where the City Council is still debating whether to accept the federal government’s offer to pay more than $6 million for 32 homes.

Banks Seek to Foreclose

While city councils and county boards of supervisors weigh the risks, some homeowners have had to fight banks seeking to foreclose on mortgages. Nearly all are still living in temporary rental housing, unable to either go home or move on.

Some are angry with their local governments for hesitating to take the federal government up on its offer. No private or public insurance is available to cover mudslide damage.

“They don’t really care,” Phyllis LaCombe says bitterly of the Sonoma County supervisors who will decide her fate. “They don’t have a concept of what this is like, or that it could happen to them.”

Rio Nido, a Russian River community about 60 miles north of San Francisco, was one of the communities hit hardest by last year’s El Nino storms. Some 34 houses were irreparably damaged or destroyed when the redwood-forested hillside above Upper Canyon Three gave way in February. Homeowners below the slide were evacuated for weeks, as a safety precaution.

Now the hill where the LaCombes lived for 11 years is fenced off with chain link and posted with hazard signs. Guards hired by the county restrict access to the site, which state geologists say could be subject to more slides. The LaCombes stopped visiting when the county bulldozed their home in October. But they still mourn their loss.

“It was the little cushion we had,” says Phyllis. “Every time there was extra money, it went toward the house.”

Vice President Al Gore visited Rio Nido soon after the landslide made the national news and promised to help. Since the federal government had never before offered to help buy out landslide victims, it was up to state and federal officials to find a way to make such a program work within existing federal regulations.

After months of negotiations with California officials, the Federal Emergency Management Agency announced last month that it was granting $22 million to help buy 165 properties scattered across 11 counties, including 14 homes in Los Angeles County. Each homeowner was to be offered 75% of the pre-disaster assessed market value of the damaged home. The rest of the funds would have to be raised by the homeowner, or come from local government.

FEMA hailed the program as innovative. Local officials initially welcomed the offer.

“All I can say is that last February, we were in a situation where there was basically no relief, public or private, for these folks,” says Sonoma County Supervisor Mike Reilly, whose district includes Rio Nido. “This is the first time I’ve seen FEMA develop an entire program to help a classification of people in just 10 months.”

Then local governments started taking a harder look at the requirements of the program. Government lawyers didn’t like what they saw.

Sonoma County’s Board of Supervisors must decide whether to accept $3.4 million to buy 34 Rio Nido homes and another 10 homes elsewhere in the county.

“If the county takes the money and buys these people out, then the county owns that property,” says Sandy Covall, Sonoma County’s emergency services coordinator. “If the slide cuts loose from that mountain and inundates other houses below, the county would be on the hook. There is no way to indemnify the county.”

Across the state, local governments are wrestling with the same dilemma.

“What it ends up doing is putting the local jurisdiction in the middle, between FEMA and the homeowner,” says Pat Canfield, assistant administrative officer for the city of Los Angeles.

“FEMA has this one-size-fits-all program that doesn’t really fit out here,” says Canfield. The city is eligible for $2.4 million for 10 homes--five in Northridge and five in Studio City--that were damaged beyond repair in last year’s landslides. The City Council has not decided whether to accept the money, Canfield says.

“In other parts of the country, they are talking about flatlands,” Canfield says. “California has problems in the hillside areas, which makes accepting this kind of grant really difficult for California communities. Every jurisdiction that applied is taking it slowly and debating this.”

Money for Malibu Homes

The federal government agreed to pay $860,500 for four homes in Malibu and Topanga Canyon. The county is still studying whether to accept the money, said Bob Donohoe, with the Department of Public Works.

FEMA spokeswoman Eliza Chan said the agency still hopes every local government that applied for the grants will follow through.

“We have been working since February to put together a comprehensive program,” Chan says. “We have transmitted the $22 million to California’s Office of Emergency Services, and I hope all the applicants will accept the offer.”

Paula Schulz, state hazard mitigation officer for Gov. Pete Wilson, says the program is the best that could be cobbled together on short notice to help people who had, in some cases, lost everything.

“We feel that we were fairly effective in working with FEMA--not to stretch the regulations, but certainly to adapt the program to fit this situation,” Schulz says.

But the federal agency was adamant, she adds, that a local government entity must take title to the land and ensure it remain in a natural state after the buyout.

Even if communities are fearful of the liability problems, Schulz says, she believes most will take the money because “there is a moral responsibility” to the victims. Besides, she says, “they are in a better position to protect their citizens if they have possession of the property,” rather than taking the risk of a private owner developing again on unsafe land.

$1.5 Million Accepted

In Monterey County, that is exactly what the Board of Supervisors has done. The county was offered $1.5

million for 10 properties near Watsonville, according to Harry Robins, director of Monterey’s Office of Emergency Services.

“The supervisors decided that slide or not, they are going to take it on, because they have a moral obligation to the people out there,” Robins says. “I don’t think they struggled with it. The alternative would be that the folks would have to declare bankruptcy or walk away from their loans.”

Elva Acevedo says she was thrilled when she learned that Monterey County would accept the federal money and buy her, her sister and her parents out of the parcels they owned in the tiny community of Las Lomas.

“They’ve been great,” says Acevedo, who lost a 6-year-old four-bedroom home and the sense of safety she had from living surrounded by relatives. “They’ve done as much as they can.” The county even allowed her family to move back into her condemned, cracked home last summer, with the proviso that the family must evacuate permanently once the winter rains start.

Acevedo has waited to look for another home until she knew whether the federal money would come through.

‘Can’t Wait,’ Homeowner Says

The federal grant will not pay the full value of Acevedo’s property. She must also pay to have the home demolished. But Acevedo will receive enough money to pay off her mortgage, and perhaps have a few thousand dollars left over, she says. Had the county not decided to accept the money, she would have had no choice but to walk away from her mortgage, Acevedo says.

“I just can’t wait until this is over with,” she says. The year, she says, has been devastating for her family. Her parents and her sister owned homes on the same block and all their properties were irreparably damaged by the same slide.

“Now, my mom is getting excited. She’s beginning to look for a new home,” says Acevedo.

In Sonoma County, Paul Kelley, chairman of the Board of Supervisors and the only member who voted against even applying for the federal program, dreads the upcoming debate on whether to accept the FEMA money for landslide victims.

Both Sonoma County and Santa Cruz County are considering creating special districts encompassing the landslides in an effort to shield the county from liability, he says. But even if that proves to be a workable solution, Kelley says, he is unhappy with the program.

“If the board decides to proceed with this,” he says, “we will have established a precedent. Future floods and landslides could put us on the hook for more taxpayer dollars and taxpayer liability, because others will say we should do the same for them. And what will we say to them?”