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Laguna
Beach residents forced to evacuate after
landslide destroys
homes
By
Starr T. Balmer
Online Forty-Niner
Assistant City Editor
About 1,000 residents were evacuated after a landslide damaged 18 Laguna Beach
homes Wednesday morning near Blue Bird Canyon Road.
Laguna Beach Police Captain Danell Adams said seven homes were lost, 11 were
damaged and three were threatened.
“This is the worst we had in quite awhile,” Adams said. “There
is still movement so I think that we are still in a danger zone,” Adams
said.
Multi-story homes came to rest at odd angles, some nearly intact and others
splintered and trailing debris. One house, snapped in two, had an American
flag fluttering from a balcony.
At the top of the hill, the foundations of several homes were left exposed,
their corners jutting out with nothing underneath to support them. One road
ended abruptly, with the edge of the pavement hanging over a tangle of debris
scattered downhill.
Laguna Beach resident Jill Lockhart watched her $2 million home hang off of
the hillside. She said she heard a popping and cracking noise around 6:30 a.m.
and grabbed her two children.
She said a teenage neighbor grabbed one her boys as she ran. They abandoned
Flamingo Road and scrambled down the shrub- and dirt-covered hillside as the
road began to buckle and plunged beneath their feet. Lockhart’s two-story
home was destroyed, she said.
“At first I thought it was an earthquake. The ground was moving below us,” Lockhart
said. “The street buckled on one side. We had to run for our lives. I don’t
know how everyone got out alive.” An electrical pole landed on top of her
sport utility vehicle while she evacuated her home.
Sherri Way, another resident, said after the hillside buckled, “The streets
started cracking, and the water started shooting out.” As she spoke she
looked up at her home and saw her back patio tilted to one side.
Sheriff’s deputies went door-to-door to check for victims. Search-and-rescue
crews were standing by.
Water, gas and electricity have been cut off from 345 homes for safety reasons.
Laguna Beach Fire Captain Jeff LaTendresse said the fire department plans to
use two search dogs to find victims trapped in the collapsed homes.
Many Laguna Beach residents who were evacuated walked out of the neighborhood
with only a few bags of their possessions. One resident filled a baby jogger
stroller with her belongings.
Residents who lost their homes were directed to Laguna High School. Nicholas
D. Samaniego of the American Red Cross said about 10 displaced residents have
checked in by the early afternoon.
The neighborhoods have been hit before by flooding, mudslides and wildfires.
In February 1998, a rainstorm triggered slides that damaged 300 homes, 18 of
them severely, and killed two people. An October 1993 fire swept down into
the city and destroyed some 400 homes. Most were rebuilt within a half-dozen
years. And in October 1978, a slide in the same canyon destroyed 14 homes.
The cause of the Laguna Beach slide has not been determined and only four minor
injuries have been reported.
The Associated Press contributed to
this story.
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