Landslide Dust Finally Settles

Six years after a landslide forced dozens of families to flee their Anaheim Hills dream homes, city officials and others have settled the last in the resulting series of lawsuits, paying out more than $19 million in all in the aftermath of the disaster.

Nearly 250 families sued Anaheim and others involved with the housing development endangered by the January 1993 Santiago landslide. The case was finally closed earlier this month when the last plaintiff agreed to settle for $27,250, concluding one of the lengthiest landslide cases in Orange County, said attorney Michael Rubin, who represented the city.

Many residents were just glad to have it over with.

“I don’t know if this is something to be joyful about. I mean, it’s settled. It’s over,” said Ed Muratori, who spent about $15,000 to repair his home following the landslide. “We sued for much more money than what we got, but this thing was just going on for too long. At some point in time, you get tired.”

Amid torrential rains that prompted much of Southern California to be declared a disaster area, city officials in January 1993 learned that the already saturated Anaheim Hills bluff was sliding downward at a rate of about an inch a day. Fearing that the slide might cause the entire hillside to collapse, the city evacuated 46 families in the hardest-hit areas.

The hillside didn’t topple, but the slide tore at the foundation of many homes that lined Avenida de Santiago, Georgetown Circle and other nearby residential streets, leaving cracks several inches wide through living rooms and fissures that divided driveways and swimming pools. Streets and sidewalks buckled. Property values, for some homes originally assessed upward of $1 million, plummeted.

About a quarter of the residents eventually sold their homes at a loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars, said William E. Stoner, whose law firm represented most of the homeowners.

“We’re satisfied with the settlement,” Stoner said, adding that his clients “are happy to have the ordeal behind them, and no longer have to deal with the city of Anaheim.”

In their lawsuit, residents claimed that developers never should have been allowed to build on land they knew to be susceptible to landslides. Brittle plastic pipes, which homeowners contend cracked and leaked, contributing to the landslide, also should not have been used in construction, according to the lawsuit.

City officials denied they were aware of the slide risk, and argued that they spent millions of dollars to correct the problem as soon as it was detected, including installing pumps to drain the hillside. Facing mounting legal action, Anaheim authorities in 1995 filed a countersuit, charging that residents contributed to the slide by over-watering the landscape and failing to repair leaky swimming pools. The countersuit was later withdrawn.

Rubin, the city’s attorney, insists the city did all it could, acting “in a remarkably responsive way to the situation,” he said.

The legal dispute hinged on which of the two landslide boundaries submitted to the court would be used to determine damages.

The city claimed that only 36 homes were immediately within the landslide zone, while attorneys for the homeowners contended about 250 homes were affected. The suits dragged on for years until a judge appointed an independent engineering geologist, whose final analysis was similar to the city’s assessment, said Rubin, the city’s attorney.

“We reached a conceptual settlement, I believe, within a week of the geology expert’s testimony,” Rubin said.

The agreed-upon settlement topped $19 million, officials said. The city’s insurers agreed to pay $10 million toward the final settlement, with two plastic-pipe manufacturers contributing another $3.75 million. The rest of the amount will come from the plaintiffs’ insurers and other cross-defendants, Rubin said.

Of the settlement, $3.5 million was set aside to maintain a water pumping system that the city installed to stabilize the hillside. The system includes dozens of vertical wells pumping water from 50 to 300 feet underground, draining the hillside.

“There has been no movement in that landslide since March of 1993. We have monitoring devices . . . to guarantee that it won’t move,” said Natalie Meeks, city engineer in charge of the wells at the time.

But others aren’t so sure.

Jerry Tatarian, 30, said he bought a house on Avenida de Santiago after hiring engineering experts who determined that the ground was stable. He then spent about $60,000 to repair the foundation, and poured tens of thousands of dollars more into fixing minor problems including various cracks.

But new cracks have since appeared on his patio and in his swimming pool. “We all suffered because of the landslide . . . and we’re still suffering,” Tatarian said.

While he fears that living in Anaheim Hills will continue to be a constant battle against the forces of nature, Tatarian added that for the most part, it’s worth it.

“It’s quiet. It’s far away from the city,” he said.

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Santiago Landslide

In January 1993, a 23-acre landslide forced Anaheim city officials to evacuate 46 families from their hilltop homes. Lawsuits involving about 250 families soon followed and dragged on for years. The last case from that disaster was finally settled and dismissed this month.

Source: City of Anaheim