Slide Conditions: Critical but Stable

The area where a sudden landslide sent a home careening down a canyon appeared to stabilize Monday, but officials and experts said the record El Nino rains have so saturated hillsides that further destructive earth movement is likely elsewhere along the coast.

The prospect of more landslides brings an added level of stress to residents because, unlike the brush fires and flowing mud that regularly torment coastal canyon property owners, earth movements are not covered by homeowner insurance.

Workers on Monday dug deep holes into the ground along Cerritos Drive to determine the severity of the Sunday morning landslide and whether more neighboring homes were in jeopardy.

“Of course, we’re feeling very nervous,” said Julie Reardon, 42, whose home overlooks the $600,000 house that crashed down the canyon at dawn Sunday. “We’re still not sure if the street won’t be undermined and we’re right in the middle of it.”

But residents, as well as city officials and experts, said landslides remain one of the natural risks amid the green canopies and dramatic rock formations overlooking the ocean here.

The heavy rains separated topsoil from the solid bedrock, causing the instability that apparently destroyed the home on Sunday, according to Jeff Powers, a landscape designer and former Laguna Beach planning commissioner.

“The water acts as a lubricant between the rock and the earth,” Powers said. “The risk is there, especially when you have a lot of rain like we have seen. It might also [activate] subterranean rivers that hadn’t flowed for years.”

Costal hillsides from San Clemente and Laguna Beach up to Malibu and Pacific Palisades have also suffered from periodic landslides. But increased housing development over the last 40 years have made for costly disasters.

In 1978, for example, about 40 pricey homes in the Bluebird Canyon section of Laguna Beach were damaged or destroyed by a massive slide. The city and other government agencies responded by removing tons of unstable earth and replacing it with compacted soil, allowing homeowners to rebuild.

After three homes were destroyed by a landslide on Mystic Lane in 1992, the city purchased the land and undertook a similar excavation process. The city recently sold that land to a developer who will build homes there.

But officials said government can’t afford such undertaking in most slide areas, leaving residents with the task of making their homes as safe as possible.

California insurance companies have not offered coverage for landslides since the 1950s when dozens of homes were lost in the Portuguese Bend slides on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

With this winter’s El Nino-driven storms, some homeowners in the Hollywood Hills, Malibu and other hard-hit areas have urged state Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush to consider a public insurance program for slide victims similar to the state’s program earthquake coverage.

Quackenbush studied the idea but rejected it, saying it would cost too much and benefit too few people.

Laguna Beach Councilman Wayne J. Baglin said he remains hopeful that catastrophic insurance plans now being debated in Congress might provide slide victims with coverage.

“This would help people with major natural disasters, whether it’s a hurricane in Miami, a tornado in the South or a slide in Laguna,” he said.

In response to the slide danger, Laguna Beach has established stricter building rules in recent years that require people building canyon homes to pay for a geological report of their land and have the finding reviewed by a city-hired geologist.

But the city does not require any retrofitting or geological reviews when homes are sold.

City Manager Kenneth C. Frank says the city urges property owners to reduce the risks of slides by growing native vegetation and installing drainage systems that flow into storm drains rather than into the ground.

“We have done several information campaigns for residents,” Frank said. “But essentially, this is private property and it is the [property owners’] responsibility.”

Many homeowners who live around the slide zone said they hired geologists to check the stability of their properties before buying.

Reardon, who has lived in her home for five years, carries homeowner and earthquake insurance but realizes that landslides aren’t covered. It’s a risk she’s willing to take.

“It’s such a great place to live. Look and see how beautiful and peaceful it is,” she said, gesturing toward the lush hills and ocean view. “I wouldn’t move away because of this [landslide]. You just rebuild and go on.”

Architects said that homes can be made protected against landslides by attaching the foundation to pilings that are driven deep into the ground. But residents rarely spend the $100,000-plus costs unless their homes experience visible cracking or movement.

Frank said that geologists hired by the city spent Monday boring samples of the hillside on Cerritos Drive where one home was destroyed and a second residence was temporarily declared unsafe.

“Our purpose is to find out what we need to do to make certain the street in stabilized,” he said. “The street doesn’t appear to be moving right this moment. But we’ll know more in a couple of days.”

In addition to geologists, the city plans to examine aerial photographs that also may help show any slippage or movement, he said.

Residents are waiting anxiously for word.

“It’s very humbling to see how vulnerable all of us are.” said Stuart Bloom, 57, a resident of 10 years. “It’s been very unsettling for us.”