‘Hell no, we’re not leaving’: A California community defies evacuation warning as ancient landslide rips their homes apart
CNN
Residents living on the largest area of natural vegetation on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, 30 miles south of downtown Los Angeles, used to call the coastal ground movement slowly shifting beneath their feet the best thing that ever happened to them.
Residents living on the largest area of natural vegetation on the Palos Verdes Peninsula, 30 miles south of downtown Los Angeles, used to call the coastal ground movement slowly shifting beneath their feet the best thing that ever happened to them. An ancient complex of landslides under the Portuguese Bend Reserve, located within the larger Palos Verdes Nature Preserve, was activated in 1956, which halted all housing development in the area. That allowed many of the homeowners to buy their properties for far less than what they would later be worth after undergoing extensive renovations. For hundreds of years, the Portuguese Bend barely felt any movement from the gradually shifting landslide complex. But this year, residents living in the community’s 140 homes started to see cracks in the ground – in their closets, bedrooms and gardens – steadily getting bigger and ripping apart their properties as the land movement began to accelerate following two years of severe storms starting in 2022. The devastation caused by the landslide started last winter. But residents say the origins of the crisis started in 1956, when city officials greenlighted the construction of 200 homes and seven miles of roads along the top of a canyon. The construction that year happened at the same time the area experienced landslide movement, causing destruction to around 150 homes and deeming the area unsuitable for housing development, according to the city of Ranchos Palos Verdes. “The slide in 1956 stopped development here for a long time and the houses were undervalued, so people moved here because they loved the beauty in the ocean, and they weren’t looking to make a fortune or anything like that,” said Sheri Hastings, who moved to the neighborhood with her husband in 1979. “They moved here because they loved the pure nature of this place, which is now, unfortunately, being undermined. It’s ironic in a way.”
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