Southern California landslide destroys 12 houses

A massive landslide in Rolling Hills Estates this weekend destroyed 12 houses, officials said on Sunday, July 9, further underscoring the lurking danger of continually shifting earth on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

All the homes were evacuated by Saturday night. At least three of the houses, said Rolling Hills Estates Councilmember Frank Zerunyan, won’t make it through Sunday night — and will fall into the canyon below.

“It’s devastating,” Zerunyan said in a Sunday afternoon interview. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

The “land shift,” as officials are calling it, occurred in a gated community on Peartree Lane.

Residents initially called the Los Angeles County Fire Department to report a water leak around 4 p.m. Saturday, Zerunyan said. When the firefighters arrived, they noticed cracks in the ground — and quickly realized the potential danger.

The county Fire Department ordered evacuations shortly after, multiple officials said.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn, whose Fourth District includes the Peninsula, arrived at Peartreet Late Saturday night.

While there, Hahn said during a Sunday afternoon press conference, she saw a fissure winding its way through the homes. The fissure continued to move while she was there, Hahn said — and did so quickly.

“Since I was here last night,” Hahn said, “the land has moved about six feet. So many of these homes that last night were still standing, are crumbling and giving way to the fissure.”

“We believe many of these homes,” she added, “will fall into the canyon sooner rather than later.”

It is hard to see in this photo, but there are homes here in Rolling Hills Estates that are physically leaning — like this garage— following the landslide. pic.twitter.com/JlBpbgMxay

— Janice Hahn (@SupJaniceHahn) July 9, 2023

The 12 homes in the evacuation zone were leaning or crumbling, according to photos and details from officials. Driveways were cracked and mishapen. Door and garage frames were slanted, rather than parallel.

Deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Lomita Station patrolled the neighborhood Saturday night to ensure the evacuated homes were secure, Hahn wrote in a Saturday night tweet.

In a follow-up statement later Sunday, Hanh said residents only had a few moments to grab their belongings and leave their homes.

The 12 houses that were evacuated were red-tagged, according to LA County Fire Department spokesperson Capt. Chiyoshi Hasegawa. If a building has been red-tagged, it means it’s been damaged so severely that it’s too dangerous to be in.

Electricity in the area was turned off and utility crews made sure no gas or power lines were disrupted.

Hahn’s office connected officials with the city and the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works, so the latter agency’s geologist can “survey the land and determine the best course of action,” the supervisor said in her Sunday statement.

In all, 16 people were displaced, Hasegawa said. All of the evacuated residents have found shelter, thanks to the American Red Cross, Zerunyan said.

It’s unclear what caused the landslide. But city officials will look at several possible causes, including the winter deluge and a sinkhole that recently developed less than a mile away, though a building official said the latter explanation is “probably not” the reason.

Either way, land movement on the coast has gone unabated for centuries.

That danger is particularly acute on the Peninsula, a picturesque and relatively rural area of Los Angeles County — as least compared to the rest of the region — that is known for its hiking trails, ocean-view lookouts and lush hillslides.

The Peninsula, which is celebrating its unofficial 100th anniversary as a community this year, received a hint of the potential damage landslides could cause late last year. In December, boulders and other debris rained down from a hillside to the beach below in Palos Verdes Estates, adjacent to Torrance, though that landslide caused only minimal property damage and no injuries.

Rancho Palos Verdes, meanwhile, spends about $1 million per year to resurface a portion of Palos Verdes Drive South that is continually shifting and cracking.

That stretch of road is in a 240-acre southern section of Rancho Palos Verdes known as the Portuguese Bend Landslide area.

Landslides have always been a problem there. But in 1956, the county extended Crenshaw Boulevard to the coast, according to an RPV press release earlier this year. That exacerbated the issue.

Today, the Portuguese Bend Landslide section of RPV is the most active landslide area in North America, according to city officials, moving at a rate of as much as eight feet each year.

The rough boundaries of the PBL area is the Portuguese Bend neighborhood to the west, the Seaview neighborhood to the east, Burma Road to the north and the Pacific Ocean to the south.

Rancho Palos Verdes was the last of the four Peninsula cities to incorporate, having done so in 1973. And over the years, some houses on RPV have moved 400 to 500 feet from their original property lines.

RPV is currently working to develop and implement a potentially $33 million plan to lessen the problem of continually shifting land, though that work faces multiple challenges, including from environmentalists because of possible destruction of native habitats.

“There’s a serious risk of major incident if we do not act fast enough,” RPV City Manager Ara Mihranian said in February. “(Palos Verdes Drive South) is sitting on wet soil. There’s a sewer line there. There could be a significant movement that may be very catastrophic and that’s why this is very important.”

Likewise, a preliminary geotechnical analysis of the soil conditions at the December landslide site in Palos Verdes Estates indicated another portion of that slope was actively moving and could fall at any time, PVE City Manager Mark Prestwich said at the time.

The extent of this weekend’s Rolling Hills Estates land movement, meanwhile, likely won’t be entirely known until geologists survey the area.

That survey likely won’t happen until the next day or two, Zerunyan said. Right now, he added, the priority is making sure everyone is safe. Officials were closing off trails in the area, Zerunyan said.

Pete Goodrich, a building official for Rolling Hills estates, confirmed during the Sunday afternoon press conference that there wasn’t much geologists could do at the moment. There’s nothing they can do to stop the houses from falling into the canyon, Goodrich said.

Three of the 12 homes will certainly fall into the canyon, Zerunyan said. The fate of the other nine was not yet known.

That neighborhood has around 80 homes total, the councilmember said.

Building officials will monitor other nearby homes to see if any more need to be evacuated, Goodrich said. But at the moment, that seems unlikely.

“There is a pretty definite line,” he said, “where you would see land movement.”

But that doesn’t mean the other residents are struggling with the fallout.

“We are very much in shock about what’s happening here,” Mayor Britt Huff said during the press conference. “As you can imagine, all of them (the neighborhood) are in a  state of uncertainty right now.”

Zerunyan and the rest of the City Council, along with Hahn, attended that press conference. While there, Zerunyan said, they could hear the ground cracking — and he saw a piece of a house’s wall crumble and fall into the canyon below.

“There’s a lot of weight there,” he said, “and gravity is taking hold.”

There is nothing at the bottom of the canyon, Zerunyan said, so no one will be in danger if the houses on Peartree Lane fall.

Zerunyan, who has lived on the Peninsula for 45 years, said there are multiple canyons in Rolling Hills Estates, but the one at the bottom of Peartree lane is particularly steep.

He also said the winter deluge that hit Southern California late last year and early in 2023 may have contributed to the landslide.

City officials, in the coming days and weeks, will likely look at other canyons in the town and determine how vulnerable they are, Zerunyan said. But he seemed pessimistic about whether anything could be done to shore them up.

“I would be reluctant about touching any of the canyons,” he said, “because I don’t want to make it any worse.”

Staff writer Lisa Jacobs, freelance photographer Raphael Richardson and City News Service contributed to this report.