Home Care In Palos Verdes Peninsula, CA

The fallout from a massive landslide on the Palos Verdes Peninsula continued unfolding as a slow-motion tragedy on Monday, July 10, with at least 10 homes in a gated Rolling Hills Estates neighborhood on the brink of crumbling into the canyon below.

Two out of the 12 destroyed homes, meanwhile, were on a “wait and see” list, according to officials at a late-Monday walk-through of the impacted area. And officials are monitoring another 16, though no evacuations from those homes have yet been ordered, said Los Angeles County fire Chief Anthony Marrone.

It’s unclear how long the waiting will last, Marrone said.

“We don’t know how long that these homes are going to continue to move,” he said. “At this time, it’s just a holding pattern we’re in, waiting to see what the final determination is going to be.”

Related: Does homeowners insurance cover landslides? That’s a key question on Peninsula

And for the residents who had to hurry from their red-tagged homes, the past two days have been traumatic.

April Zee and her husband, David, are just two of the16 residents who spent Monday watching and waiting outside their Peartree Lane home, which is one of two that are on the “wait and see” list.

The Zees are the newcomers on the block.

The Zees have lived at 27 Peartree Lane for only two months. They moved from Torrance in May so their son could start as a freshman at Peninsula High in the fall, April Zee said via phone on Monday.

A destroyed house and garage sit empty after a landslide in Rolling Hills Estates on Sunday, July 9, 2023. (Photo by Raphael Richardson, Contributing Photographer)

Their house is at the end of the red-tagged evacuation zone. Since Sunday, their neighbor’s home at 29 Peartree has shifted significantly, with its patio dropping into the canyon by at least six feet, Zee said. That home’s foundation is entirely exposed, she said.

The Zee family’s home shares a common wall with 29 Peartree.

“We’re just hoping nothing else slides,” Zee said. “Once his house goes, ours could be next.”

Other homes along Peartree have not fared as well. There are tilted garages, cracked stucco walls and split red brick roofs.

The Los Angeles County Fire Department was called out to Peartree Lane on Saturday afternoon to identify cracks that were forming in the foundations of the 12 houses. Officials quickly realized the danger.

Homeowners had 30 minutes to gather essential belongs and evacuate, Zee said.

And now, there’s no going back.

“Force of gravity is taking them,” said county Supervisor Janice Hahn. “They will all eventually go. It’s how far they go.”

As she fled her new home, Zee said, she took her eighth-grade son’s baby stuff, her baby stuff, wedding photos, jewelry and important documents. And she threw some clothes into a suitcase.

Then, the power went out. It was time to say goodbye.

As of Monday afternoon, a geologist had yet to tour the area to assess the damage to the hillside and to determine what caused the catastrophe, said RHE Assistant City Manager Alexa Davis.

The homeowners association for the gated community, the Rolling Hills Park Villas, must hire the geologist, Hahn said at the late Monday afternoon walk-through. She’s given them a list of sources, she said.

There have been no problems reported to RHE associated with the hillside in 45 years, Davis said. The homes there — part of a planned urban development — were built in the late 1970s.

“Until there has been a comprehensive review completed by the geologist and geotechnical engineers,” Davis said in an email, “we will not have the full picture as to the cause.”

Either way, said Councilmember Frank Zerunyan, the magnitude of what has happened is unfathomable.

“It’s one thing to lose your home to a fire, but this is entirely different,” Zerunyan said. “Not only is your home gone, you can’t rebuild. The land is gone as well.”

What happened, though, was a fluke, Zerunyan said.

That’s true when looking at Peartree Lane. But when looking at the Palos Verdes Peninsula as a whole, landslides have long been a threat.

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. And Rancho Palos Verdes has a 240-acre southern section that is the most active landslide area in North America, according to city officials there, moving at a rate of as much as eight feet each year.

As for Rolling Hills Estates, the cause of the Peartree Lane landslide remains unknown.

One logical explanation for the land shifting so dramatically, Zerunyan said, could be the heavy rainy season, which could have caused the hillside to weaken. A Rolling Hills Estates building official also said on Sunday that the winter deluge was a possible cause worth investigating.

“We think after it’s all settled, a good geologist and soil expert maybe will give us a clue about how this happened,” Hahn said, “and if there’s any way of preventing it from happening on some other hillside.”

But it appears there were early signs of what was to come.

Evacuated resident Weber Yen stood outside his home of 10 years on Monday and surveyed the damage. He first noticed his patio starting to split about a week ago, he said.

He contacted the homeowner’s association and notified them of the situation, he said.

“It started progressing very rapidly into Saturday and I saw cracks in the building,” Yen said.

The Los Angles CountyFire Department inspected his home that day — and told him he should evacuate.

Yen, the Zee family and other impacted residents, meanwhile, are anxiously awaiting the next step.

Zee, on Monday afternoon, was distraught.

“It’s so overwhelming, it’s heartbreaking, it’s devastating,” she said, tearing up. The tension was evident in her voice.

But she was thankful, Zee said, that everyone got out safely.

“But we just want to know what’s next,” she said.

All impacted residents are staying with family and friends, Zerunyan said.

RHE officials were working to ensure impacted residents were connected to the Red Cross and Hahn’s District Four Supervisor’s office.

“Hopefully there will be some ways of helping these folks,” Zerunyan said. “It is a horrible thing to think that my land and my house just went like that.”

The county tax assessor, meanwhile, was scheduled to tour the area Monday and help residents understand the tax implications of the landslide, Zerunyan said.

County Assessor Jeff Prang said his office will “expedite the processing of these homes to make sure they don’t have to deal with property taxes.”

“The land that was beneath them is now going to be a hillside,” Prang said Monday. “So when we’re done valuing this property, they will have nominal value. And this result, property owners are entitled to property tax relief.”

Peartree Lane residents, meanwhile, met with the board of the homeowners association that governs Rolling Hills Park Villa on Monday evening. It was a residents-only meeting.

Rolling Hills Estates has also activated its Emergency Operations Center, and the City Council will declare a state of emergency to more quickly access federal and state resources, according to a press release.

Mayor Britt Huff, in a statement, pointed to the outpouring of support from the city itself, as well as neighboring cities, the county and state agencies.

“It has been truly inspiring to see how everyone is pulling together to offer assistance,” Huff said, “especially to our displaced residents and their families.”

Meanwhile, on Peartree Lane, residents such as As for the residents of the 12 red-tagged homes, all they can do is watch and wait — as their homes creep, in slow motion, toward the cliff’s edge.

Zee, for example, said she hasn’t been able to work or even eat.

“We’ve been outside all day,” Zee said. “We’re outside of our house, just watching it, waiting to see what will happen.”

City News Service contributed to this report.

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The Rancho Palos Verdes City Council voted to declare a local emergency at its Oct. 3 meeting, becoming the second of four cities on the Palos Verdes Peninsula to do so since July.

Land movement has become a crucial issue on the Peninsula since 12 Rolling Hills Estates homes were lost to a landslide this summer. And, RPV, the largest city on the Peninsula, has battled land shifts for decades as the site of the Portuguese Bend Landslide Complex.

On Tuesday, Councilmember Eric Alegria and the rest of the council enacted the local emergency measure, agreeing with residents impacted by recent land movement in RPV’s Seaview neighborhood that the “time for action is now.”

The Council also unanimously approved, with the absence of Mayor Barbara Ferraro, an interim urgency ordinance that would prohibit new construction within the landslide areas.

Declaring a local emergency allows a city to ask for help from county, state and federal agencies and gives RPV more authority over issues found in the landslide areas, according to officials.

“We should be as proactive and taking steps to remediate this as much as possible for the good of the community and the protection of public safety, which to me is more emergent and urgent than ever,” Alegria said.

The areas impacted most are located in the Portuguese Bend Landslide Complex (PBLC), a 240-acre swath of land that has seen substantial land movement for decades. Within those acres are three landslide areas including Portuguese Bend, Abalone Cove and Klondike Canyon.

Residents in the Seaview neighborhood, located in Klondike Canyon area, have seen substantial land movement caused by rain and potentially cracked water pipes. In June and August, two homes in Seaview were red tagged because of damage.

Councilmember Paul Seo said it was disconcerting walking the neighborhood and noticing the dramatic changes.

“I can’t emphasize enough how much the Seaview neighborhood and the neighbors there are losing sleep because they might wake up with a gaping hole in our property and the house basically falling in,” Seo said.

According to a city staff report, since 2007, the city has used monitoring points in the PBLC and determined that “land movement has accelerated this year as observed, among other things, in roadway cracks, sinkholes, structure damage, utility infrastructure damage, and trail damage throughout the Portuguese Bend Reserve, a subarea of the Palos Verdes Nature Preserve.”

City Attorney Bill Wynder said at Tuesday’s meeting by declaring a local emergency, the city can reach out to county, state and federal agencies for additional resources.

The declaration could also give the city “significant emergency authority” and includes additional powers on the Disaster Council, which consists of the City Council, city manager and other city staff, Wynder said.

Those emergency authorities over properties in the landslide areas, said Wynder, include things such as requiring leaking pools to be drained, requiring property owners to cease outdoor watering and requesting inspections of properties.

But declaring a state of local emergency doesn’t necessarily mean county, state of federal funding would be freed up to help, according to a staff report.

And it is unclear whether a local emergency declaration will have unintended consequences when it comes to the impact on property values.

“We certainly don’t want to take any action that would adversely affect property values within any of these landslides as a result of declaring a state of local emergency,” Wynder said.

The city, in its staff report, is considering short-term measures including installing surface pipes or surface drains to “convey water to the ocean to minimize percolation into the ground”; filling fissures; maintaining existing dewatering wells or installing additional dewatering wells.

This could include supporting abatement districts that were formed to tackle issues like land movement including the Klondike Canyon Landslide Abatement District and the Abalone Cove Landslide Abatement District.

Resident David Roth said the time for talking is done.

“The singular vision we have, is open up that ground, get the pipes out,” Roth said. “All the pipes in Seaview need to get replaced. They’re old. They’re leaking.”

Larry Paul and his family moved to the Seaview neighborhood in 1969.

Paul said through his research, he estimated the pipes — which have a lifespan of about 50 years — are nearly 70 years old.

“These are the only leaks that we see that come to the surface,” said Paul, adding the pipes need to be elevated above ground. “These pipes are leaking 24 hours a day, so every hour we wait continues to exacerbate the issue.”

City Manager Ara Mihranian said that a more than $23 million grant from FEMA, which the city received in August to help fund part of the city’s Portuguese Bend Landslide Remediation Project, is coming.

“There’s a series of steps that need to be made, and hopefully this declaration will help accelerate some of the efforts and be able to get in front of FEMA and try to move things at a faster rate or at least components of it to address this,” Mihranian said.

In September, the Council voted to enhance its current landslide monitoring program, adding more survey points that will help monitoring 20 years of land movement.

In July, the Rolling Hills Estates City Council declared a local emergency following the destruction of 12 homes during a landslide. Neighbors there had reported accelerated property damage, cracking in the streets and broken water pipes because of increased land movement on Peartree Lane.

According to Alexa Davis, assistant city manager in RHE, the city is “still operating under the state of emergency declared in July and continues through county, state and FEMA processes,” according to a email on Wednesday.

In an email on Oct. 4, RPV city spokesperson Megan Barnes said the local emergency declaration will return before the City Council in 60 days for review.

The urgency ordinance to put a moratorium on construction will return in 45 days for a public hearing to consider extending it, Barnes said.

Because it would impact housing construction, Barnes said, the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) “must approve the moratorium before it can be enforced.”

City staff is currently reaching out to HCD for that permission, Barnes said.

The city of Rancho Palos Verdes has declared a local emergency in response to landslides that have damaged several buildings and the threat of an unusually wet winter that may trigger more damage in the upscale community on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

The Oct. 3 declaration by the Rancho Palos Verdes City Council comes after twelve townhomes in nearby Rolling Hills Estates were red-tagged in July and evacuated after landslides made them unsafe. Weeks later, two more homes were red-tagged in Rancho Palos Verdes’ Seaview neighborhood because of cracks and structural damage.

“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,” Rancho Palos Verdes City Manager Ara Mihranian said in a statement.

Sept. 22, 2023

The recent wet winter is blamed for the severity of the movement, with “heavy winter rainfall resulting in surface water percolating into the ground and lubricating the bentonite soil,” according to the statement by the city.

Downtown Los Angeles recorded more than 27 inches of rain last winter, surpassing famously wet cities such as Portland and Seattle.

Tropical Storm Hilary brought even more rain, with Long Beach Airport reporting 2.62 inches on Aug. 20, dwarfing the historical record for that day.

Significantly more landslide movement has been reported since the start of this summer in Portuguese Bend, Abalone Cove and Klondike Canyon. There have been no reported injuries from the slides.

The declaration will also allow the city to have “the authority to expedite contracts for repair work and issue orders to help minimize additional land movement,” the statement said.

Steps that have been suggested to residents as voluntary actions to slow down the slides, such as ceasing outdoor irrigation or draining leaky swimming pools, could now be required by the city.

The declaration enacts a “moratorium on new construction that may contribute to movement” in southern Rancho Palos Verdes, according to the statement, pending approval by the California Department of Housing and Community Development.

No additional homes were red-tagged in conjunction with the City Council’s Oct. 3 vote, but with the arrival of El Niño possibly signaling another wet winter, more destabilization is possible.

Although gray whales, blue whales and humpback whales are commonly spotted off Southern California, orcas are a rare treat.

For a lucky group of whale watchers Monday, a pod of at least 10 of the distinctive black-and-white whales — including two calves — made an appearance off Palos Verdes Peninsula.

Tyler Askari, assistant port captain with Harbor Breeze Cruises, said the tour agency had received reports of possible orcas Monday morning from ferry crews operating between the mainland and Catalina Island. That afternoon, two whale-watching excursions organized by the company spotted the creatures, which were among the first orcas they had recorded in 2023.

“For our general area, it’s been about two years” since orcas were last sighted, Askari said.

Orcas are found in every ocean in the world, though certain populations stick to certain regions. They’re also known as “killer whales” and, true to their name, were seen by one of the whale-watching excursions targeting a bottlenose dolphin.

“It’s a sight to see,” Askari said, “because you kind of see Mother Nature at work.”

Most of the orcas that come through Southern California waters are “transient” orcas, also known as Bigg’s orcas. Askari said, however, the pod seen Monday was probably Eastern Tropical Pacific orcas and hailed from the coast of Mexico.

Their appearance Monday “was when they were going up the coast,” Askari said, adding that subsequent reports indicated the orcas were headed back south.

Though this pod of orcas may no longer be gracing Southern California waters, from now through May, gray whales can be seen as they cross through on their annual migration from Alaska to mate and calve in the lagoons of Baja California, Mexico. Humpback whales and fin whales are often seen year-round, while blue whales are more common sights during the summer, Askari said.

If you want to catch sight of whales this season, Point Vicente on Palos Verdes Peninsula is a hot spot for the activity. The L.A. chapter of the American Cetacean Society keeps track of the animals spotted from the Rancho Palos Verdes interpretive center. As of Wednesday, five southbound gray whales had been seen since Dec. 1, as well as a megapod of more than 1,500 dolphins. More information here.

The City Council declared a local emergency due to the landslide that destroyed 12 homes as authorities search for the cause.

City News Service, News Partner

ROLLING HILLS ESTATES, CA — The cause of a landslide responsible for the destruction of several homes in Rolling Hills Estates remained a mystery Tuesday, as the City Council declared a local emergency due to the devastating slide.

Nearly a dozen upscale homes in the Palos Verdes Peninsula community along Peartree Lane have been crumbling as a result of the massive landslide that began Saturday and forced the evacuation of the structures. By Monday, a total of 12 homes had been red-tagged, meaning they cannot be occupied, although only 10 of them appeared to be actually moving.

County fire officials were closely monitoring 16 other homes in the area to ensure they did not being shifting. County Fire Department Chief Anthony Marrone said officials were in particular watching two homes -- one at the top of the street and the other at the bottom -- and were in close contact with those homeowners, who have not been told to evacuate.

The shifting land also caused a sewer line to break, forcing an additional five houses to be evacuated Tuesday, the Southern California News Group reported, citing Assistant City Manager Alexa Davis.

The Rolling Hills Estates City Council unanimously passed a resolution declaring a local emergency in response to the slide on Tuesday night.

Find out what's happening in Palos Verdeswith free, real-time updates from Patch.

"The estimated costs in responding to the Peartree Lane Land Movement Incident are unknown at this time due to the evolving nature of the situation," according to a staff report prepared for the council. "Adoption of this resolution will facilitate the ability for the City to request resources including financial support and reimbursement from the State Office of Emergency Services and Federal Emergency Management Agency for costs incurred for the response of this emergency."

On Monday evening, County Supervisor Janice Hahn and Rolling Hills Estates Mayor Britt Huff held a meeting with affected residents. Among the other officials attending was county Assessor Jeff Prang, who said earlier his office would work with residents to ensure they would not be forced to pay hefty property tax bills for homes and properties that have been largely destroyed.

Prang said his office will be expediting the process of re-assessing the affected properties to prevent any of the owners from receiving hefty tax bills for destroyed homes.

"In a tragedy like this, people have experienced all types of hardships that you don't really think about," Prang said. "One of them is paying taxes on houses or a piece of land that no longer exist. We just need to make sure that we do everything we can do to relieve them of any burdens, especially this financial burden, as quickly as possible. So I'm here to work with the city and county and everyone else to make sure we provide that relief to these residents."

Prang said the county would not provide a blanket waiver of property taxes, but he said the re-assessing of the properties would result in them having either no or dramatically reduced tax bills due to the damage.

Hahn noted Monday after that the "land has moved 20 feet since I was here in Rolling Hills Estates yesterday afternoon."

"Homes have completely fallen into the canyon now," she wrote on her Twitter page.

Homeowners have been left to basically stand back and watch their houses collapse on themselves and sink into the turf. Hahn noted that some rooftops were now at ground level due to the continued collapse.

The homes were largely considered complete losses, Hahn said.

Marrone said fire crews were basically in a holding pattern, simply waiting for the homes to stop sliding or shifting.

"We don't know how long that these homes are going to continue to move," he said. "At this time it's just a holding pattern we're in waiting to see what the final determination is going to be."

Hahn said that after the homes stop sliding, the homeowners association in the area can bring in geologists and soil experts to examine the area.

"We think after it's all settled, a good geologist and soil expert maybe will give us a clue about how this happened and if there's any way of preventing it from happening on some other hillside," Hahn said.

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

The American Red Cross was helping to find shelter for the evacuated families. Huff said the Red Cross offered hotel vouchers to displaced residents, but most had already made other arrangements.

There have been no reports of any injuries.

Hahn said she reached out to Gov. Gavin Newsom Monday but had not yet spoken to him about the situation. She said she would like to invite him to tour the neighborhood.

City News Service