A recent heavy rainstorm has heightened concerns in the Ranchos Palos Verdes area as an imminent threat of landslides threatens the coastal city.
Last year, two homes were red-tagged during the spring and several dirt trails and roads have all but washed away, and city officials now consider seeking state relief, according to officials during a recent council meeting.
City geologist Mike Phipps warned officials at the Feb. 6 meeting that there has been significant land movement in the last 15 months near the Portuguese Bend neighborhood, with shifting of four to five feet during that time.
“What we’re dealing with here is unprecedented. We haven’t seen this kind of movement in the upper areas of the landslide in the whole history of [GPS] monitoring … that started in 2007,” he said.
In October 2023, the city declared a local state of emergency for the slowly moving land in certain areas. It was renewed in November and again in the recent meeting, and has now been extended until April 6.
City Manager Ara Mihranian suggested the council request an emergency declaration from the governor’s office thatwould trigger additional state funding.
“I think we’re at a point where we may need to ask the governor to declare an emergency for our city for the landslide,” he said at the meeting.
Mayor John Cruikshank Feb. 9 told The Epoch Times the city did reach out to Gov. Gavin Newsom and expected a meeting with his office. He said the funding could help to repair ground fissures—leaving large holes in trails and roadways—and to secure assistance from the state’s geologist and emergency services responders.
“We’re racking up quite a number of expenses as we’re trying to fill the fissures and do other inspections … so we certainly want to have their involvement to help us and their expertise because this is not just a Ranchos Palos Verdes issue, it’s a regional issue,” he said.
The issue comes as water has continued to collect deep underground where the landslides are occurring, despite city efforts to remove it, and the accumulation has accelerated with the recent storms, according to the city’s website.
City Manager Mihranian said during the meeting that the storms will likely lead to worsening conditions later in the year.
“We won’t even realize the impacts of the rain for weeks or months to come, and the ground is quite saturated,” he said.
Mr. Phipps, the city geologist, said losing infrastructure and roads is likely the worst that will happen, unlike the catastrophic event last year in nearby Rolling Hills, where land moved 15 to 20 feet.
According to most recent GPS monitoring data, the average land movement since October 2023 showed a progression of three to four times more than that of October 2022 to October 2023, but Mr. Phipps said the current moving pace is slow.
In the city council’s next meeting, city staff will instruct the council on next steps to request an emergency declaration from the governor, and an action plan for other funding sources to address the issue.
According to reports by the National Weather Service for the storm that began Feb. 4, certain parts of Southern California saw more than a foot of rain, with new daily rainfall records set, and downtown Los Angeles received the second most rain ever in a 72-hour period.
By the afternoon of Feb. 7, there had been more than 500 reports of mudslides in Los Angeles, according to city officials.
