Reservoir Ordered Drained to Ease Landslide Threat

An Orange County judge ordered Wednesday that a reservoir be drained as part of an emergency plan to save dozens of homes in an Orange neighborhood on a slope that the judge said is subject to “imminent and catastrophic failure.”

The Olive Hills Reservoir, in the neighboring city of Anaheim, has been a source of concern to homeowners in the Vista Royale neighborhood because experts have predicted a landslide, possibly in four to six months.

Judge Robert E. Thomas issued the order less than a month after directing parties in more than a dozen lawsuits to agree to secret emergency sessions to try to head off a life-threatening landslide.

However, the reservoir is not the only worry for the area.

Many residents have filed individual lawsuits against Vista Royale’s developer, the 396 Investment Co. of Newport Beach. The community’s homeowners association is seeking up to $16 million to stabilize the hillside that rises more than 125 feet from the neighborhood into a small community of million-dollar homes.

They contend that the developer failed to account for unpredictable geologic conditions and did not properly solidify the slope with compacted earth.

Although all residents are still in their houses, many are in anguish over the threat and uncertainty that has hung over their heads for at least two years.

None have been evacuated, but they have been advised to take earthquake prevention precautions, such as leaving shoes by the sides of their beds, removing valuables from their house and agreeing on a post-evacuation staging area to account for survivors.

“This really is very upsetting to all of us,” said Gretchen Bereiter, a resident of Vista Crest Drive, the street that experts believe would suffer the greatest damage. “It is just so frightening.”

The Vista Royale neighborhood, developed in the late 1980s in the foothills east of the Newport-Costa Mesa Freeway, drew well-to-do young families to the hillside houses costing up to $300,000.

Houses with spacious lots line the drives leading to a separate development, the gated community of Peralta Point, next to the Olive Hills Reservoir, which the judge ordered drained.

At the entrance to Peralta Point, the brick columns anchoring the black iron gates are crooked, and bricks are coming loose. Thick fissures run through the ground and driveways, and sidewalks appear cracked and buckling. Cracks in the stucco follow the joints between floors of two of the houses, and elegant lampposts and masonry fences are leaning.

Tests have shown that the hill has moved up to nine inches in a year. Experts believe a series of deep concrete caissons could be used to pin the hill to the ground, but it could cost up to $16 million, attorneys said.

That could mean trouble for less affluent residents living below in Vista Royale, where the projected landslide could occur. Attorneys said the homeowners association cannot afford the repairs and is not responsible for the damage.

“This is not ‘slope creep,’ ” said Stephen McNamara, the association’s attorney, referring to more common tendencies of Southern California’s hills. “It would be a major area of slide that would take out 20 to 30 homes.”

Officials with 396 Investment Co. could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

Some residents are not in the path of the projected landslide, but worry that any disturbance in the neighborhood--at the least--will destroy their property values.

“People here are sick about it--what the hell do you do?” said Michael Clairmont, owner of a house on Vista Ridge Drive who spent last weekend moving valuables to a storage shed, just in case.

Clairmont’s neighbor, Carol Trujillo, was never told about the slope problems before she and her 15-year-old son moved in just three weeks ago.

“We were really hoping for a new start and we were so excited to get a home here,” said Trujillo, whose husband died a year ago. “Now we have this.