Slow landslide still on move

By: PAUL SISSON - Staff Writer | Wednesday, January 19, 2005 11:32 PM PST ∞

OCEANSIDE ---- There is nothing more frustrating than watching trouble approach slowly. That's the situation facing about 10 families living on the east side of Comanche Street as they watch an earthen embankment behind their homes slide a few inches closer day by day.

"If it just came and went whoosh, that would be easier. Then you could start cleaning up," said Eric Phillips, who lives at 1920 Comanche with his wife, Sherri, and their two children.

The landslide has already severely damaged eight homes on Arroyo Avenue in eastern Oceanside ---- the same street that suffered landslide damage 24 years ago ---- and is threatening 10 more on Comanche Street on the downhill side of the slope. City officials said a series of storms that dropped 4.12 inches of rain in Oceanside over a five-day period ending last Wednesday apparently caused the slide.

The earth is still moving in the neighborhood ----- immediately northeast of the intersection of College and Oceanside boulevards ---- cracking slabs and walls and buckling patios along the way.

By Phillips' calculation, the landslide coming down from Arroyo Avenue moved more than 3 inches over the past 24 hours. He uses a wire tied to a tree on the slope behind his home to determine how far the land has moved.

As the earth moves into back yards, it pushes against pools, walkways and patios. At many homes, those concrete structures butt up against the slabs of people's homes, providing a perfect path for the weight of the mud to eventually damage slabs and send a home's market value spiraling downward.

Phillips had a crew come in Wednesday to cut out a section of a concrete walkway next to a swimming pool in his back yard. The concrete was under so much pressure from the advancing embankment that it grabbed the whirling blade of the saw once the cut was finished.

Next-door neighbor John Barnett had the same crew cut a section out of the concrete patio after he heard a crack while sitting inside. An 18-inch cut was made in the patio at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday. By 12:12 p.m., that gap had narrowed by 2 inches.

"Without doing this, my house would probably be cracked pretty bad by now," Barnett said.

Both families said they are frustrated that the city has not taken a neighborhoodwide approach to minimizing damage from the slow-moving landslide. The city has said it is OK to take preventative measures, such as cutting gaps in concrete

"I don't know if what I'm doing now is putting more pressure on my neighbors," Barnett said.

Sherri Phillips worries that there seems to be no contingency plan, no road map, for what residents can do to protect themselves. All they can do is wait and watch the land continue to creep forward.

"What is going to happen during the next storm?" she wondered.

"We should be looking at that now instead of when and then," her husband, Eric, added.

The city sent out crews Wednesday to begin tracking the slide. Teams of surveyors drove 18-inch metal "monument" spikes into the saturated ground in dozens of locations near the slide.

Deja vu

A smaller landslide caused problems on Arroyo Avenue in 1981.

At that time, Peter Berg and his wife, Marcia, lived at 1919 Arroyo Ave.

"The floor cracked and it broke the house into two pieces," he recalled, speaking from his new home in San Marcos.

Berg said it took about four years to finally get a settlement from the developer, the John Martin Co. Eventually, the company, or perhaps Berg's insurance company ---- he could not remember ---- settled out of court.

"We got out and we sold the place for basically nothing," he said.

Berg added that a slab motion meter was attached to the house to detect any future movement and that the damage that had been done was written into the property's deed.

"There was full disclosure," he said.

He added that the property's new owner, who was in the construction trades, jacked the home's damaged slab into the air and installed a concrete pilar to keep the home in place.

Berg said the houses on either side of his were also damaged.

"The crack went behind the house on the left and in front of the house on the right," he recalled.

Peter Weiss, director of the Oceanside Public Works Department, said the city has no records on file of any landslide-related repairs being made to any of the properties on Arroyo Avenue.

"We have no records of any building or engineering permits for repairs to any of those homes," Weiss said Wednesday.

He said officials at City Hall are still researching records from the early 1980s but that the city may simply not have known about the landslide in 1981 or about the repairs that were made.

"We have no records that there was any formal city involvement," Weiss said.

He said he understands that the families living at the bottom of the slope are frustrated with the city's inability to give solutions that will stop the slide or slow its progress.

"At this point, we still do not believe lives are in danger," Weiss said. "I think they should take whatever precautionary measures are necessary."

He said the city can't get involved in cutting into the slope to help drain water or scoop dirt away from homes because the slide is still moving.

"I can't tell you what that fix is because I do not have the full answer yet," Weiss said. "The slope's still moving."

Meanwhile, families at the top continued the long process of moving out.

Many spent all day Tuesday doing media interviews for every TV station in San Diego County and seemed ready to simply get down to work and be left alone.

A crew from Calvary Chapel Church in Oceanside came to the home of Barbara Watkins on Arroyo Avenue. Her house continued to sink even as she and volunteers loaded a moving truck with furniture.

Two pillars just outside her front door look even more askew than they did Tuesday, and her back patio continues to tilt precariously downward.

"Go look at the spa. It's sunk even more," she said, turning back to her work.

Contact staff writer Paul Sisson at (760) 901-4087 or psisson@nctimes.com.