Home Care In Rancho Palos Verdes, CA

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What you should know

The recent deluge of rain brought on by a series of atmospheric rivers has accelerated land movement in Palos Verdes Peninsula, where dozens of homes are at risk of being destroyed and a historic landmark has been closed to the public.

The Rancho Palos Verdes City Council on Tuesday night voted unanimously to formally ask Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency in the city. That came a day after L.A. County Supervisor Janice Hahn, whose district includes the area, called on Newsom to provide state support for the Portuguese Bend landslide complex area.

The area has seen anywhere from than 1.7 to more than 2.8 inches of rain since Monday — and that's on top of the 6 inches brought about by a series of storms earlier this month. Increased land movement has become an increasing issue in the since 2018. At least 150 slides have been been documented in the region that’s home to multimillion-dollar homes and scenic trails.

What emergency declarations would do

In a statement released late Tuesday, Rancho Palos Verdes Mayor John Cruikshank, said an "emergency declaration by Gov. Newsom could help the City expedite remediation efforts to slow the movement as quickly as possible.”

“While we know we cannot completely stop the landslide in our community, we have spent yearsidentifying peer-reviewed engineering strategies to greatly slow its movement," said Cruikshank, who is one of two challengers to Hahn for her seat on the Board of Supervisors. "Now, we needthe state’s help in making their implementation a reality.”

He's referring to plans drawn up under the Portuguese Bend Landslide Remediation Project.

By declaring the state of emergency, city officials said, it would allow them to bypass state permit requirements for repair efforts and expedite work. At Tuesday evening’s meeting the council also unanimously voted to ask Newsom to ask President Joe Biden to declare the area as a federal disaster zone, opening it up for federal funding.

City officials called the landslide complex, the “largest landslide in North America” and “the most active landslide.”

The facts on the ground

“I saw a lot of fresh cracks in the ground across pavements, and just in the earth and a number of places that show me that the landslide is actively moving,” Mike Phipps, a city geologist said this week. “Because there's been so much movement, I'm expecting that the landslide — the impacts are going to be seen probably in a shorter period of time."

That's because more cracks in the earth mean more avenues for water to seep into already saturated ground, he added.

What residents are saying and seeing

Nikki Noushkam lives in the Seaview neighborhood of Rancho Palos Verdes, across the street from a home that’s already been red tagged. Outside her home, red and orange street signs declare road closures. Fissures in the street are covered with tarps. Every time it rains, Noushkam said, she lines her home with sandbags.

“We try to make sure that we don't allow water to accumulate in areas, that's basically all that we can do,” she said. “Once the water gets inside the fissures, (that's) where the problem starts happening and the land movements starts happening.”

Earlier this month, Rancho Palos Verdes extended a local emergency declaration in the landslide complex area, putting applications for construction permits on hold.

The recent storms have also “significantly compromised” trails in the area, resulting in closures in the Palos Verdes Nature Preserve. Some trails have been closed since last year because of damage from the shifting hillsides.

A city spokesperson said park rangers will assess conditions at the preserve 48 hours after the current rain has stopped to determine whether to reopen.

About Wayfarers Chapel

Last week, Wayfarers Chapel, which opened on a bluff in Rancho Palos Verdes in 1951, closed to the public, citing "accelerated land movement in our local area."

The closure of the chapel and its grounds comes just two months after the property was declared a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service.

Church officials, who called the decision devastating, now say that stabilizing the 3 1/2 acre property will be expensive and time consuming.

With more rain on the way, people living in Rancho Palos Verdes are getting worried due to the threat of land movement.

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. (KABC) -- With more rain on the way, people living in Rancho Palos Verdes are getting worried over the threat of land movement.

Rain is expected to arrive Sunday and last on and off through Wednesday, according to forecasters. On Saturday, crews were spotted working to raise waterlines above ground in an effort to save homes that have already been damaged by rapid land movement.

Residents like Nikki Noushkam have one major concern: losing their homes. She says crews have provided sand bags and are working to fill cracks.

"I have cracks around my house. I cannot use my garage," she said. "We can't sell, we can't rent, we can't stay, we can't leave. I really, really am hoping and imploring of our leaders, our state and federal leaders, to actually step up, and help us."

Leaders for Rancho Palos Verdes and Rolling Hills say they're working with other agencies to find ways to mitigate accelerated land movement, which Rancho Palos Verdes mayor tells Eyewitness News has been happening more frequently in recent years. The cost for a solution? An estimated $35 million, funding the city of Rancho Palos Verdes doesn't have.

Wayfarers Chapel, a scenic wedding spot that was recently designated a National Historic Landmark, announced it has closed indefinitely due ground movement in the area.

"With recent rains and even rains last winter we understand it's just percolating down from the hills above us and its causing asphalt to surge in ways we have never seen before," said Rev. Dan Burchett, executive director of the chapel.

Rainfall predictions call for 2 to 4 inches in coastal and valley areas and 4 to 6 inches possible in foothills and mountains, with some localized totals reaching up to 8 inches. Peak rainfall rates of 0.5 to 1 inch are likely, with the higher end of the range focused across south facing mountain slopes and foothills.

The storm that hit Southern California earlier this month caused mudslides and flash flooding in many parts of the region. Emergency crews are urging people living in low lying areas to start preparing now.

City News Service, Inc. contributed to this report.

The Rancho Palos Verdes City Council has declared a local emergency due to increasing land movement following landslides.

The council took the vote at its Oct. 3 meeting following increased movement in the Portuguese Bend, Abalone Cove and Klondike Canyon landslide areas. The council hopes its decision will provide ample time for staff to request state and federal assistance to address the issue.

Rancho Palos Verdes’ Emergency Operations Center is currently operating at a “Level 3” — the lowest level of activation, the city said in a press release. No homes have been instructed to evacuate at this time.

The local emergency declaration gives the city the authority to expedite contracts for repair work and instate measures to help keep additional land movement to a minimum. The city has not yet issued any regulations.

A state of local emergency was formerly declared in July after a landslide forced the evacuation of 17 homes, at least 12 of which were red-tagged and 10 heavily damaged as of July 19. Residents reported creaking sounds, cracks forming throughout their houses and broken pipes.

Recent land movement is believed to be attributed to heavy winter rainfall belatedly lubricating the bentonite soil, the city said.

Rancho Palos Verdes City Manager Ara Mihranian is hopeful that the city’s actions are within the public’s best interests.

“This action strengthens the City’s access to resources to manage the land movement, especially in light of the El Niño weather pattern forecasted for this winter, and our ability to obtain possible mutual aid from county, state and federal partners,” Mihranian said in the city’s press release.

The council has also adopted an urgency ordinance that would temporarily prohibit any new construction that might advance the landslide on the south side of the city. The ordinance cannot take effect until it has been approved by the California Department of Housing and Community Development.

City staff were asked to present a short-term remediation action plan within the next 60 days.

Community members can find resources and answers to frequently asked questions at the Rancho Palos Verdes city website.

City leaders in Rancho Palos Verdes plan to ask the state to waive environmental reviews and other regulatory hurdles so they can expedite their fight against the accelerating landslide complex that threatens crucial infrastructure in the city and hundreds of homes.

Amid drenching rainstorms that threaten to worsen the problem, the City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to ask Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a state of emergency for the area. The landslide complex that underlies much of the coastal city has been slowly shifting for decades, but over the last few months, the movement has increased alarmingly.

Officials also voted to ask the governor to request that President Biden designate the landslide complex as a federal disaster, which could free up potential funding streams, including from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

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“It is time to take action,” Councilmember David Bradley said at the crowded meeting Tuesday night. “Anything we can do and as fast as we can do it, we need to do it.”

The council already has declared a local emergency, but the situation has since deteriorated with back-to-back rainy winters. A statewide emergency proclamation could enable the city to jump-start its $33-million landslide remediation project — which has been in development since 2016 but remains months away from clearing final environmental reviews.

“It is paramount at this point that we are able to move quickly and not be held up with lengthy permitting processes,” City Manager Ara Mihranian said. Those reviews are “acceptable under normal conditions, but we are not operating under normal conditions today.”

That project was supposed to proactively stabilize the Portuguese Bend area, but the issue has recently become more urgent.

Record-setting rainstorms that have drenched Southern California have caused water to infiltrate the layers of clay in the landslide area, softening it and allowing for more rapid movement.

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California

Feb. 18, 2024

Two homes have been red tagged. Other residents have reported cracks in their walls, doorways that have split at the seams and sinkholes on their properties. The pavement on Palos Verdes Drive South, a major roadway through the community, is buckling. Wayfarers Chapel, L.A.’s famed “Glass Church,” was forced to close this month because of the land movement.

“In some areas, [the land] is moving up to 10 feet a year,” Mihranian said. “That’s significant movement, and we’re seeing the damage that’s being sustained throughout the community. We have approximately 400 homes that are threatened by this landslide.”

If Newsom issues the emergency declaration, it would help the city move more quickly to stabilize the Portuguese Bend landslide area by allowing it to bypass much of the state permitting gantlet that such projects typically face, including reviews by the California Coastal Commission, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board, the State Water Resources Control Board and the South Coast Air Quality Management District. The council may also ask that the governor waive requirements under the California Environmental Quality Act related to the remediation effort.

“When you look at the timeline and the path forward for us getting work done, I think requesting the suspension of entitlements will help us get to the finish line sooner,” Mihranian said.

If the governor approves the request, Mihranian estimates work could begin as early as the spring, as opposed to sometime next year.

City officials’ most urgent goal is to prevent rainwater from seeping into the ground. According to a city staff report, the city seeks to do so by filling fissures that have developed, constructing drainage swales that will divert runoff to the ocean and installing more “dewatering wells” to extract groundwater.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn urged Newsom on Monday to visit Rancho Palos Verdes to see the effects of the land movement firsthand.

“I think if the governor came here and saw the buckling streets, the homes sinking and cracking apart, and the historic Wayfarers Chapel on the verge of collapsing, he would understand the urgency of this request,” Hahn said in a statement. “This is a crisis that is getting worse by the day, and I urge Gov. Newsom to visit us and see it with his own eyes.”

California

Feb. 15, 2024

The ground in Portuguese Bend has been shifting extremely slowly for decades, making it one of the most studied landslides in the nation. But the movement has intensified in the last several months.

Major land movement is now occurring across nearly 700 acres, or a little more than 1 square mile. GPS monitoring conducted in January showed that the average rate of movement within the complex between October 2023 and January accelerated three to four times compared with movement a year earlier, according to a staff report.

“What’s happening is unprecedented,” Mike Phipps, Rancho Palos Verdes’ contracted geologist, told The Times this month after reviewing more than 16 years of data. “We haven’t seen this kind of movement in the upper areas of the landslide in the whole history of monitoring this landslide.”

The city is not yet asking the governor to help pay for the landslide remediation work, mostly because of the delay such a request would cause. City staff wrote in a report that “time is of the essence for the emergency work to stabilize the area due to the immediate threat to public safety.”

Rancho Palos Verdes officials are preparing to close a section of Palos Verdes Drive South for repairs after the two-lane roadway suffered damage from an accelerating landslide complex that continues to wreak havoc on the coastal city.

Palos Verdes Drive South is a major two-lane road that spans a roughly 5-mile stretch of the California coast along which 15,000 vehicles pass every day, officials said. At the moment, visible cracks in the asphalt can be seen where the road has fallen into disrepair due to shifting sediment.

“We’re doing short-term repairs right now,” said City Manager Ara Mihranian. But an “imminent road closure” will take place over the next month to address a “severe drop” in the roadway that locals call “the ski jump,” he said.

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Officials are recommending that this section of roadway be flatted out to some extent, Mihranian said. The section runs between Narcissa and Peppertree drives. Details of the planned road closure and its repairs will be presented to the City Council on April 2.

The Portuguese Bend Landslide Complex that underlies much of the city has been slowly shifting for decades, but over the last few months, the movement has increased alarmingly. Heavy rains over the last two winters have contributed to the problem.

The land in some areas is descending toward the Pacific Ocean at a rate of about half an inch a day, according to Michael Phipps, a geologist working for the city. The landslide has already damaged some homes and recently forced the closure of the historic Wayfarers Chapel, a popular wedding site perched on a hillside overlooking the ocean.

In a recent report presented to the City Council, Phipps found that the current pace is three or four times the rate recorded in 2023.

A particular type of soil makes the Portuguese Bend especially vulnerable to landslides, Phipps said. Millions of years ago a volcanic eruption deposited ash that became bentonite clay. “When [bentonite] gets wet, it becomes even weaker,” said Phipps. “So we’ve really got the worst of all situations.”

The city is using underground pumps called dewatering wells to drain the water table to help stabilize the land, officials said. The city has also halted development in certain affected areas. So far, Mihranian said, only two damaged homes have been marked as uninhabitable.

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The Federal Emergency Management Agency has selected Rancho Palos Verdes for a $23.3- million grant to help with remediation efforts.

“There’s other discussions about trying to intercept the water that’s coming down to natural canyons up into the head of the landslide,” Phipps said. But all the city’s measures will at best only slow the landslide to imperceptible movement, not completely stop it, he said.