4 Months After Slide, a Laguna Family Is in Rebuilding Phase

By all appearances, Alberto Trevino Jr.’s house is a goner.

Propped precariously on the upper edge of a crumbled canyon, the back half of his Laguna Beach home hangs 40 feet in the air. Insulation and plastic pipes jut out from underneath, and a green garden hose flaps in the breeze like a climbing rope.

Since the June 1 Bluebird Canyon landslide damaged 20 homes, 11 families have demolished their houses because the damage was too extensive. Another is scheduled to do the same soon.

But at least five homeowners, including Trevino, are moving forward to repair, trepidation and all.

“Look at the soil,” Trevino said as he stood below his dilapidated house last week, shuffling his feet in the landslide-exposed dirt.

“It’s so powdery looking. You just think more of it will drop down and undermine the house. Just a minor earthquake could force the soil to slough off some more,” he said.

But despite his doubts, the former Irvine Co. planner is moving forward with the reconstruction of his $1.8-million house on Madison Place, on the upper tier of the slide area.

“We’ve gone from feeling that it might be better to take the house down ... to trying to salvage what exists,” said Trevino, 74.

“It wasn’t clear until this past week that shoring was a distinct possibility,” he said.

That’s when he learned that the city would prop up his house with steel beams.

Repairing the top of the landslide area -- which includes Trevino’s backyard -- is a priority for the city as it works to stabilize the hillside before the expected winter rains.

To prevent homes on Madison Place from sliding more, geologists hired by the city plan to sink a retaining wall 70 feet into the hillside. The wall is intended to protect the lower areas from more slides and allow the city to eventually rebuild Flamingo Road, which is down the slope from Madison Place.

The total cost of the hillside repairs will be about $15 million, city officials said.

Funding is still an issue. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has denied Laguna’s request for reconstruction money. The city is appealing the decision with the help of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who is scheduled to visit the slide area Tuesday.

The city is also proposing a half-cent-on-the-dollar sales tax that officials say would raise $8.5 million for hillside reconstruction efforts. Residents will vote on the proposal Dec. 13.

Meanwhile, shifts in the soil in Bluebird Canyon continue to keep residents on their toes.

The demolition of a large house at 925 Oriole Drive, on the western edge of the sheared canyon, caused a minor slide last weekend that snapped cables, tore off a fire hydrant and frayed nerves. Residents of three Oriole Drive homes were evacuated for an evening, but were allowed to return the next morning.

Trevino knows all too well about such roller-coaster rides.

At first, soil engineers and geologists took a look at Trevino’s teetering home and declared it unsalvageable.

“We had all these people looking at it going, ‘You can’t save that,’ ” said Laurence Trevino, 22, Alberto’s youngest son. But further studies proved them wrong.

And then there was the painting. Shortly after the slide, by chance a neighbor of Trevino’s discovered that the artwork Trevino had hanging for years in his living room was, unknown to him, a rare piece worth about $500,000.

So despite the landslide, Trevino counts himself among the lucky. He said he expected the shoring under his home to be finished by the end of November, but it will be at least two years before his family can move back.

Trevino said watching the chaos that recently unfolded along the Gulf Coast in the wake of Hurricane Katrina helped put some perspective on his situation: “Even though [the landslide] was a catastrophe for us, when you look at New Orleans, this is minor. Those people are the ones that are really suffering.”