Homes destroyed as ground shifts above canyon in Southern California

LOS ANGELES — Katie Schwartz thought she was overreacting. After she had noticed a few small cracks in her Rolling Hills Estates home late last week, she decided to call the fire department Saturday to check it out.

“I thought I was crazy,” Schwartz said.

Worst-case scenario, she thought a wall might need repairs.

“They came out and said, ‘You’re not overreacting,’” said Schwartz, 57.

Hours later, she, her husband, their daughter and almost half of their small street on Peartree Lane were evacuated and 12 homes were red-tagged, as the land beneath the picturesque neighborhood had started to shift, seemingly inexplicably.

By Monday morning, multiple homes had slid down the hillside that borders the southeast side of the street, dipping below what was left of their driveways, some almost completely hidden from the road they previously lined.

Garage doors were almost flattened, roofs had caved in, massive crevices exposed beams and pipes. Many of the homes were already gone.

“Just shock,” Schwartz said Monday, taking in the escalating damage. “It just changes your whole life.”

The homes were red-tagged after firefighters and investigators found them visibly leaning Saturday afternoon because of massive movement on the hillside. The community is on the northern side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, facing Torrance.

Those homes are continuing their decline down the hillside, Los Angeles County Fire Capt. Sheila Kelliher said Monday morning.

“Things are still shifting there,” Kelliher said. “The hillside is still moving. We don’t know the extent of that movement, but geographical engineers are on their way to the site to further assess the situation.”

David Zee and his family were told by emergency officials they had just 20 minutes to get out of their home Saturday night.

“It’s just amazing how quickly this all happened,” Zee, 52, said Monday morning after he returned to his street.

Zee, his wife and their son moved in to their home just two months ago from Torrance, excited for the new school district and beautiful scenery. Before they could even get acquainted with the neighborhood, their home started to slide off the hillside.

“It’s a terrible way to meet your neighbors,” Zee said. “The good thing is that nobody was hurt — all the neighbors got out safely.”

After seeing the damage Monday morning, he said he is relying on the experts for what will come next. “The ground is still moving,” he said. His home is “still standing, but I don’t know.”

At a Sunday news conference at the site, L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn said officials “believe many of these homes will fall into the canyon sooner than later.”

Hahn first visited the street late Saturday and said she could hear the “snap, crackle, pop” of shifting homes, but the movement was minor. By Sunday, though, the homes had fallen 6 to 10 feet down the ravine.

Hahn revisited the scene Monday morning as the homes continued to slide, saying the situation has become a waiting game.

“There’s nothing we can do, I’ve been told, to stop what’s happening,” Hahn said. “That’s why it’s wait-and-see at that point. Waiting for the homes to fall.”

All the evacuated residents have found somewhere to relocate, most with relatives, and at least two residents who are out of the country haven’t seen their home yet. The Los Angeles County assessor will meet homeowners Monday afternoon to help them apply for a property tax waiver, Hahn said.

“We’ve got the whole county family to help,” she said. “It’s just so horrible, I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The 12 evacuated homes have had gas, water and power shut off, according to the Los Angeles County Fire Department, and 16 additional homes have had their gas shut off to ensure the shifting homes don’t cause a leak. Crews from Southern California Gas Co. and Southern California Edison were on the scene Monday.

“To come today and see — like this one’s gone into the ravine,” Hahn said, pointing at one home with only a slanted garage still visible. “Seeing roofs at eye level is just surreal.”

Firefighters and investigators were initially sent about 4 p.m. Saturday to Peartree Lane, where they found damaged homes and garages.

Officials said a visible fissure was winding its way between the homes that were affected.

Pete Goodrich, a building official with the city, said geologists will inspect the site and decide what can be done. He said there was substantial damage to the homes.

The land movement “could be due to the extensive rains that we’ve had ... but we don’t know,” Goodrich said of recent winter storms.

Rolling Hills Estates is on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in southwestern Los Angeles County, where a big chunk of land is slowly sliding into the sea.

A dormant landslide complex that shaped the south side of the peninsula for hundreds of thousands of years was reactivated 67 years ago, threatening to destroy homes and infrastructure in the hillside communities that dot the landscape.

Palos Verdes Peninsula has long been prone to landslides, and the most dramatic one is affecting Portuguese Bend, an area named after a Portuguese whaling operation, now known for its natural beauty and native vegetation.

The Portuguese Bend landslide was triggered in the summer of 1956 — nearly two decades before Rancho Palos Verdes became a city — when a Los Angeles County road crew was constructing an extension of Crenshaw Boulevard that would run from Crest Road to Palos Verdes Drive South.

City officials in Ranchos Palos Verdes are considering a $25 million project that would involve a series of wells to pull water out of the ground and send it into the ocean, effectively drying up the lubricated landscape enough to stop the land from sliding.

City planner Ara Mihranian said officials had to take action before it’s too late.

“Something catastrophic is imminent,” Mihranian told the Los Angeles Times in March.

The neighborhood where the Peartree Lane homes are sliding was built in 1978, Rolling Hills Estates Mayor Britt Huff said.

Schwartz, the homeowner who noticed the cracks in her home last week, is living in a Redondo Beach hotel with her family until they can find a more permanent home. It could be years until they get back on track, she said.

“Retirement may never happen now,” she said, but it was the thought of leaving her community that brought tears to her eyes.

“That’s the only thing I care about,” Schwartz said. “We’ll never get neighbors like that again. Whether we ever get money, or we don’t get money to buy somewhere else, maybe not ... (but) we’ll never get the neighbors back.”

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(Los Angeles Times staff writer Jack Flemming contributed to this report.)