Landslides in southern California have raised concerns about three multimillion-dollar luxury homes on the edge of the cliff side.
Dramatic photos and videos of three properties in Dana Point in Orange county show that dirt and rocks on the bluff slid down to the shore below during the recent torrential rainstorms, giving the appearance that the homes were now precariously dangling at the very edge of the cliff.
But Lewis Bruggeman, an owner of one of the homes, told local news station KCAL that there was no reason to be alarmed, saying his house was “not threatened”. He also said the property had not been “red-tagged”, meaning there was no order to evacuate the home and officials did not consider the properties at risk of falling to the shore.
During the latest storm, tons of rocks and debris slid down to the beach right below bluff-side homes in Dana Point. https://t.co/mgzeUEwPWf
— KCAL News (@kcalnews) February 13, 2024
“The city agrees that there’s no major structural issue with the house right now,” Bruggeman said, according to KCAL.
The landslide removed greenery that was at the edge of Bruggeman’s home, the Los Angeles Times reported, noting that his property is a 9,700-sq-ft compound with an estimated value of nearly $16m. The rocks and debris from the landslide landed below near Dana Point’s tide pools.
Mike Killebrew, Dana Point’s city manager, told KCAL that the city’s geotechnical engineer visited the site and confirmed “there is no imminent threat”. And the mayor, Jamey Federico, told the LA Times: “Quite frankly, it looks a lot scarier than it really is.”
Last year, two dozen people were ordered to flee their oceanside homes in San Clemente, another Orange county city, during major storms that caused the ground below them to crumble.
Sea level rise and increasing rainfall mean these types of threats will become more common, Kate Huckelbridge, executive director of the California Coastal Commission told the LAist news site: “The combination of those two phenomena are destabilizing some of our coastal cliffs and I think landslides on bluffs like these are, unfortunately, likely to become more common.”
The climate crisis is making storms costlier and deadlier, and this month’s storms left nine people dead and led LA to experience half of its annual rainfall in days. The storms also caused an estimated $11bn in damages.
More rain is in the southern California forecast, arriving by late Sunday night and possibly lasting into Wednesday.
