SAN DIEGO — The saturated ground continues to compromise hillsides and threaten homes in San Diego County.
In Lakeside, the fire department believes a shift in wet dirt broke a water line yesterday, causing a portion of hillside to give way underneath a home. The fire department says it has continued to limit access to the bedroom until it’s secure.
Crews covered a slope in Mission Hills Thursday after part of a cliff collapsed into two backyards.
Fortunately, no one was hurt but these unstable cliffs are a big concern.
Rex Huffman and his wife were home when a cliff collapsed into their backyard yesterday and since then it has moved closer to their patio deck.
“I’m a little more fearful than I was a couple of hours ago,” said Huffman.
CBS 8 invited Geologist Pat Abbott to survey the damage that is in the area of the Rose Canyon Fault.
“I see several things of danger,” Abbott said. “It’s a dangerous and unstable situation.”
Abbott says the dirt under the backyard above Huffman’s property is fill dirt that’s been saturated with water and adds no security. There were also heavy, concrete cinder blocks stacked atop one another that were not cemented on the property.
“There are no support rods going through them they are certainly there by their weight only," Abbott said. In other words, when you get a lateral push on them it’s only their weight resisting it and as you can see heavier things have already fallen."
Above Huffman’s property, the patio is hanging over a ledge and one of the braces that stabilized it crumbled down the hill. Juniper trees that lined the property fell over.
“It’s the fact that so much rain has fallen that the water so saturated the earth that it is making it easier for gravity to pull things down,” Abbott said.
Huffman says the owner of the house wasn’t living there when the cliff collapsed but Huffman says he spoke to him yesterday.
“He was devastated because he was two or three weeks away from pulling the permit to have held all of this up and fix this before it slid down,” said Huffman.
CBS 8 checked permit records with the San Diego Development Services Department and found several applications for work at the address where the home was sold a year ago.
CBS 8 called the owner but have not heard back.
“I don’t know where you go from here,” said Huffman.
The city tells CBS 8 crews yellow-tagged the compromised home, meaning only contractors can enter and put a red tag on the backyard and around Huffman’s deck which would restrict access.
The city also recommended the slope be covered to limit any threats, which the owner did this afternoon.
“I wouldn’t sleep in this house it for me because it would be a concern,” said Abbott.
A city spokesperson says the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department responded on Wednesday. The San Diego Development Services Department sent a Senior Combination Inspector, Senior Structural Engineer and a Geologist to evaluate the situation.
She says repairs to the slope and damages to private property are the responsibility of the homeowners.
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