Posted on 06/01/2005 8:55:57 AM PDT by Howlin
LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. - A landslide sent at least five expensive homes crashing down a hill Wednesday and may have damaged many others.
Fire department personnel had no estimate of the damage, and there was no immediate word on whether there were any injuries.
Television helicopter footage showed smashed homes on heavily built-up Flamingo Road. The earth was still moving beneath the homes. Some fell nearly intact, while others were ripped apart and left trails of debris.
The steep coastal area has had slide problems before and several homes were "red-tagged" as uninhabitable in February, during the second rainiest season on record in Southern California.
Laguna Beach is about 50 miles southeast of Los Angeles.
Yeah, I realize you're SHY!
Yes. One of the oldest tricks in the book....Tries to undermine one of the ten commandments.....
Works on all classes...but especially on those with less.
FRegards,
KCBS is still live. Now that gas has finally been turned off (it was apparently quite an ordeal), media will be able to move in closer.
As of noon, the slide is still moving at an estimated 20-50' per hour. 500 homes/1000 people evacuated.
Actually, it was detailed photographs of her home included in a photography project by an amateur photographer, who put up a website designed to document erosion and what he deemed excessive development along the coastline.
You are so right! Didn't realize it at the time we bought the house -- looked really nice -- little did we know what type of soil was underneath.
Wow.
What happens to your ownership of "real estate" when the earth moves/slides/disappears?
now is that the area where the houses are destroyed? I heard 75 red tagged an hour ago
Mighty pretty area, Laguna Beach. This is so sad...a lot of these people have owned their homes for a LONG time. And a lot of them have "merely" achieved the American Dream.
20-50' per hour....I can't even imagine.
I do believe "all" the property that is built on the edge meaning on the side of hills, edge of cliffs, back in the forest areas, etc. are accidents waiting to happen from mudslides, rockslides, forest fires, etc. Driving to San Diego, you pass development after development built up in the mountains/hills. Excuse me, but if our tax dollars help out these people through disaster funds, then we have a right comment about stupid people rebuilding where they already had slides.
They weren't clear about exactly what's still moving. I suspect it's the lower area, but I don't know.
"What happens to your ownership of "real estate" when the earth moves/slides/disappears?"
The earth is simply re-arranged, not gone missing.
The structures lost are probably not insured.
A procedure is in place to reduce the taxable value, in events such as this.
I just heard on KCAL:
"every hill wants to be flat"
Geology lesson.
The people in Laguna Beach have better attitudes, than some class enviers on FR.
I was driving up the hillside in So. Laguna last week to see a client and the amount of new housing all along the route was amazing. On one lot that had maybe 20 feet of land and then a sheer drop they were cantilevering a huge home off the cliff face. I was thinking that if there were an earthquake I wouldn't want to be in that house or driving up that road either!
20-50' per hour....I can't even imagine
Oh isn't this just something!! I had to go out and look at our own hillside!! We live on a hill in Eagle Rock. Nothing, NOTHING compared to that though.......YIKES. Are you saying that the land is STILL moving now?Watched coverage this morning.
I had never heard of Yucaipa until we were transferred to Norton AFB -- where we wanted to live in Redlands our kids would have been bussed across town to attend elementary school because the school near where we were looking was filled.
That made up go up I-10 to Yucaipa. The day the movers packed the truck for our transfer out of CA, ash from a forest fire in the Little San Gorgonio Mountains was on the sidewalk and getting on the boxes. That same day I drove to Von's and watched a fire break out in the Crafton Hills. Area is absolutely gorgeous but there are definite drawbacks caused by Mother Nature to living there which doesn't include all the illegals.
As a former and future resident of Florida, I should have more sympathy than I do, I guess. But in Florida, we've learned to build houses that aren't as vulnerable as cliff-dwelling. I wouldn 't live in a trailer home in FL, but I can't see how it could possibly matter what your house is made of when you build it on a dang cliff. I don't remember a year I haven't heard of mudslides in the West.
There's a LOT of hilly areas out here with homes on them...almost forever...and nothing has happened.
I'm glad "your" hill is OK!!
You'd have a hard time building on a hillside in Florida!
It is not class envy by me -- I think it is dumb to build on hillsides and even dumber to rebuild where there was a slide in the past. That has nothing to do with money but lack of common sense and I think that is exactly what a lot of people are thinking.
I don't care if you work at the local gas station or are a millionaire -- stupid is stupid. You don't build on the edge of nature -- you are asking for problems anywhere in the Country. Guess people figured CA would stay dry forever. We were putting in a sprinkler system and couldn't get the trencher to work right. Next door neighbor said to wet down the backyard thoroughly (which we did) and next you know, the trencher was moving right along the next day. Never have seen soil go from hard as a rock to pourous so fast in my life.
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