This Laguna Beach Landslide Is No Disaster, Just a ‘Hassle’

When Peter Hanes heard that the hill behind his Laguna Beach home had given way, he rushed home from work with one fear on his mind.

Please, not another Bluebird.

Monday afternoon’s small landslide in Hanes’ Laguna Canyon backyard caused little damage but left a few frayed nerves in a city nearing the first anniversary of the devastating June 1 slide in nearby Bluebird Canyon.

The Bluebird disaster destroyed 17 homes. What Hanes found upon arriving at his Canyon Acres Drive home amounted to little more than “a nuisance,” he said Tuesday. “An expensive hassle.”

Hanes said a leak in an irrigation system on his steep half-acre lot caused about 20,000 tons of mud to slide about 100 feet, covering a wooden terrace and wrapping around a peach tree. Two neighboring homes were briefly evacuated.

Hannes Richter, a geo-technical engineer with the city-contracted GeoFirm, said the slide involved a shift in a few feet of topsoil. The Bluebird slide involved the failure of the hill’s underlying bedrock after a winter of heavy rains.

Jay Grant, who lives across the street from Hanes, said Monday’s slide unsettled the street’s close-knit community, which has seen its fair share of natural disasters. Fifty of the block’s 70 homes -- including Grant’s -- were destroyed in the 1993 Laguna Beach wildfires, he said.

“My heart went out to Peter,” said Grant, an associate pastor at Laguna’s Little Church by the Sea. “We all had strong emotional reactions to the possibility of something happening again.”

Hanes, a divorce lawyer, had resolved to return to work after a brief visit by a soil engineer Tuesday. “I have other people to worry about today,” he said.

What about the pile of dirt in his backyard?

“Give it a week, let it settle,” he said. “We’ll go from there.”