I took a geology class at UC Long Beach in 1965 and the geology professor discussed that houses were being built on an active Palos Verde land slide, and that movement would occur in the future because the toe of the land slide was being excavated for roads. This was a predicable event.
What is the "toe" area? That sounds like the bottom of the hill, but weren't they working on the top of the hill to extend Crenshaw blvd when this all started?
As a native California I‘be known about this unstable place since the late fifties. I am in my early eighties. I have hired geologists to check houses with small cracks and been warned not to buy in some areas. I am fascinated to find your podcast as I I been following the rather meager news closely. Thanks, Pat
Never underestimate peoples ability to wilfully ignore blatantly obvious problems and convince themselves that surely it will be fine, nothing bad will happen to Them.
As a former resident of Rancho Palos Verdes who observed this ongoing problem for decades, I don't believe it can be remedied. The site will have to be permanently abandoned.
Thats probably bs. Stabilizing the area will stop it widening as much. The current zone is a full loss, yes, but stopping it reaching rolling hills where the money is at will be a priority
@@generalpatton838the entire area around Los Angeles is slip prone poorly consolidated dirt… It’s been shattered for centuries by repeated earthquakes.
Why did they allow building in this area? Oh yeah, corporate greed. Since the 1950’s? Buyer beware, the feds should not be involved in rebuilding mistakes only to fail again.
People want to live in scenic areas. Developers want to build in scenic areas. They put immense pressure on local politicians to allow development of scenic areas. But scenic areas are often hazardous areas. That means they become expensive areas. The residents and developers want to shift the costs of ownership onto everyone else. They want their scenic areas subsidized by insurance companies and public funding of remediation.
yep. A sand cliff gave way in my hometown and killed an entire family in their sleep, directly on the water. A year later another portion gave way and just missed another home by inches. The city condemned about half the homes but not homes on either side of the death house, figure that one out. Jump forward 20 years and according to Zillow that stretch of road now has about half a dozen brand new AirBnBs on it. They built some sort of wall that frankly has zero chance of holding back the cliff if it decides to give way again and it will its freaking sand.
Out where I live, the fad is to build kindiling up against homes and then complain loudly when a forest fire passes through (something that's actually healthy for the trees here). People be stupid.
I lived in Rolling Hills Estates on the top of the Palis Verdes Peninsula from 1958 to 1965. The whole peninsula is an orphan piece of the Pacific tectonic plate the forms an escarpment rising independently from the Catalina Channel. It is formed from sedimentary rock with forty to fifty feet of top cover soil. Between the overpayment and the base rock is a layer of dry, powdery clay anywhere from two to ten feet thick. As long as the overlying soil is intact, everything is stable. 14:56 However, as you correctly noted, several main streets running south from LA were cut through the overlayment. As an escarpment, the sides of rise, called Mt. San Pedro, are very steep. In order to reach the top without switchbacks, the builders cut the roadway into the side and top of the hill, opening the subsoil clay to the elements. Then, in the early 1960’s, the overpayment soils on the opposite (south) side of the hill began to slide. That is the Portuguese Bend area. Even while we lived on the north side of the hill, overlooking scenic Torrance, CA, I kept hearing that PV would become more and more expensive for existing homes because the whole western and southern facing sides of the hill were unsafe for any future building. I guess greed is more powerful than common sense.
Portuguese Bend has been moving my entire life. When you drive on the road up there it was always bumpy and the service pipes were always above ground. It may be much worse now but the movement is a surprise to no one.
Yep lived in south bay all my life, and we always drove around PV and to Marineland and the Glass Church the road was always bumpy, those gas lines on that sharp dip up and down on the road were always smelling bad with gas ever since I can remember! We went for a drive around the back bend…omg the road is extremely much worse and bumpy, gas lines even more apparent with smell! The Glass Church is affected and they closed it, they are taking it apart to set somewhere else.
I took geology at Cal State in 1972. The instructor had occasionally been hired by people wanting to build in Southern Calif.. He'd do reports whether sites were geologically sound enough to build on. When he said, "no", the builder would simply hire a different geologist; then another, then another, until he found one that would say, "Yes. It's safe to build on that lot." The builder would then have a green light to apply for permits.
My husband worked for a geological company for 2 years taking a break from flight instruction. RPV hired the company in 1987 to see if there was some way of stopping the movement in Portuguese Bend. The Vice President of the company told the city at that time that there was no way of stopping the movement. What's interesting is that same company was hired to study a lot that 2 doctors from San Pedro Hospital wanted to build some townhomes near Western and 25th. The company told them not to build because the lot was unstable. The doctors told them if they put it in their report they would sue. The doctors then found another company that would allow them to build. They built on the lot and a few years later there was a huge crack that went through the lot destroying several townhomes. It ended up being a multi-million dollar lawsuit.
As a NC resident, I know personally of people whose homes on the Outer Banks have crumbled into the sea after decades of failed beach restoration efforts. Those whose homes are next in the path of the ocean still demand more sand at state expense. Taxpayers elsewhere in the state, including me, are frustrated with the unrealistic and essentially futile expense. If they buy their own sand and pump it in, fine, but they claim that tourism is something the whole state benefits from. I don’t know the answer except I know the sea will win, just like the landslide will in CA.
It is time for the state and federal governments to agree to say "enough is enough" to bail out people who insist on building and living in areas known and prone to these types of conditions repeatedly. Once one of these types of conditions is identified, no new construction should be allowed in the area, and help the people in the area to move to a non-threatened area. I have seen houses built on stilts to be above floodwaters in known areas of flooding. Once a condition is determined then it is up to the landowner to decide if they want to take the chance to build and live there but not then expect the rest of the population to come in to save them from the harm they put themselves into. There are houses built on the river side of the levees in New Orleans that are inhabited and have utilities to them even though they pay no taxes because the house is on the batture or river side of a levee. This is a very common practice in that area and has been for over 100 years with the people knowing the danger and likelihood of floods and damage.
I lived on the beach in Indian River Shores FL just east of Vero Beach. The not so bright people in our county complained about the taxpayer money spent on rebuilding the beach. Close to 60% of the property taxes were paid from those homes on the barrier island. Many of the local jobs and stores were funded my spending from those people living on the island. Few if any households had kids in the public schools. I did the math. The tax money for schools that we didn't use was 4800% more than the sand. Plus we didn't replace sand every year. Our high taxes also covered the cost of firefighters, police, jails, roads and many other county services. I think that all new rebuilds or new construction in these zones should pony up the insurance money to cover future issues. The taxable value would drop because of the cost of insurance. I also think that if you don't set aside food and water for an Fema type event you should get billed for the handouts. Now poor people could get a credit. But it's easy to rinse out those 2 L. bottlers and store up drinking water before a storm. We can't fix stupid sometimes, but handing out money and goods isn't the way to teach people.
In 1957, I visited nearby Marineland and the now landslide-destroyed Wayfarers Chapel, both of which overlooked Portuguese Bend. I remember my father talking about the 1956 reactivation of an ancient landslide there. "Don't ever buy a house there," he said. Anyone who bought or built in that area since 1956 was either duped or in denial. Since then, the land has continued to move.
I appreciate your summaries. I'm in shock and awe just what is happening to the Palos Verdes area. It looks devastating. It seems like some city officials and others knew this was a big possibility. I always said, don't live by any coastlines, EVER! Landslides always eventually happen
Give it up. Don't sink another penny into constantly shifting and sinking land. To hell with any clueless homeowners claiming ignorance of something that's been going on for centuries.
40 years ago when i was a teenager, i used to jump my car off the 5' drop offs on Portuguese Bend. That road was under constant construction due to the movement of the land. They've known about this since the 1950s. I can't believe they were allowed to build there in the first place.
Yes, engineers who speak to the heft and might of the actual situation that is happening right there! But not all are able to see clearly, and want to keep trying to engineer the impossible. As a Californian, you do have to learn some geology. Thanks Casey Jones!! 😻
@@dancingcolorsVdeRegilGeology is fascinating. The difference between the alluvial material where I lived in Northern CA and the clay soil in the Olympia region in NW Washington have such unique issues.
I think this is exactly what those people signed up for. They knew the area was going to end up in the ocean, they just hoped it would happen after they died. Same goes for an awful lot of waterfront property elsewhere.
The Portuguese Bend area of Palos Verdes has suffered from land slippage since my earliest memories. Recall visiting Marineland of the Pacific as a kid 1960s and seeing the damaged houses and bumpy streets. What a beautiful area, with moderate coastal temperatures and a near-constant sea breeze. PS - sorry to hear the Wayfarers Chapel has had to be disassembled. PS2 - on September 3, 2024, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in a Los Angeles suburb after officials announced they’d be cutting power to the area due to the threat of ongoing landslides.
And Portuguese Bend is not at the toe of the landslide as he mentioned but at the headscarp. I'm 70 years old and I know this has been going on for ever. Casey Jones is talking like this is knew and that there are solutions.
Please allow me to add a me2 at this point. I remember loving to visit Marineland. And the bend was a topic even then I heard my elders remark about. I moved into Hermosa Beach in the late 1970s; and, it seemed Portuguese Bend was a topic in the news darned near every day. This all was seen coming. But co-workers insisted on buying homes in the area. So what can I say other than I would resent having to pay to make these people whole again. They did it to themselves and should admit they screwed up. Then they can start over. {^_^}
I grew up near there. Fifty years ago, I was attending West L.A. College and had Mr. Connor for geology and oceanography. He would call this type of landside as "creep". We were reviewing for a test and Mr. Connor asked "Does anybody know what creep is"? A girl ahead of me raised her hand and said "I do". "Creep is the guy sitting next to me". There you have it, a little geology humor.
Everyone was aware, 'sunken city' / Portuguese bend served as a living monument and constant reminder. I live in Torrance. Everyone knows PV is and has always been falling in to the sea. Like you said its very reminiscent of the people repeatedly rebuilding homes in areas that keep getting flooded by hurricanes. we should be encouraging all people living in these known hazardous regions to move elsewhere. I understand its difficult but spending incredible money per capita protected by the installations is not good civil policy
Sunken City is in San Pedro and nowhere near a geologic landslide area much less Portuguese Bend. Different cause and situation; Sunken City is normal coastal erosion.
@@jasonherring2419Different cause, but similar questions of public policy are at play - fundamental questions about the role of government in executing what I view as the prime directive: public safety.
Bottom line, the area is unsafe, remediation is not possible, and the people living in that area should move. All along the California coast, the same thing - land is falling back to the sea.
If the climate is really warming up significantly ocean levels will rise. It will not take much to leave Florida and NYC/Manhattan Island looking very very different from what we have now. At what point do we decide area ZZZ is a cultural heritage site and work to save it rather than simply tell the people there despite warnings to suck it up. *I* don't know. I'll probably die before that has to be answered. You folks, mostly, should be thinking about this so you can have a valid say in the answer. (IMAO NYC can sink unless it can clean up the mess politicians have made of the place and saving Fla, as much as I'd like to, is not really feasible.) {^_^}
P. Geol here. Great presentation of the facts, and thanks for digging into lots of little details. I am not a hydrogeologist but I have managed and been accountable for the budget on lots of large and very complex environmental remediation projects. This has so many red flags. A massive groundwater extraction system within an active slide is a recipe for fiscal and performance disaster. Every connection will fail, every estimate of lifecycle before re-drilling will be off, and the cost each time will multiply. Working within neighbourhoods with already failing infrastructure and upset residents will be slow and costly. Then the slide will keep sliding and the residents will be hooped because the scale of the geological unit is just too much. There is no happy answer here. I usually tend to blame residents building in the wrong place for coastal slide impacts, but this seems like an outlier. It was inevitable but the residents really had no reason to know.
I'm going to disagree, the residents absolutely knew about the slide since it started shifting in the 50s. The roads were always having issues & getting repaired. But since nothing too bad seemed to happen, the residents just stayed.
If the residents didn’t know about it, or the likelihood of a serious upheaval in the near future; the local and state governments should be held responsible. No one can predict the future, but clearly, the probability of a serious event, with only expensive remediation choices, was very likely.
They need to stop using taxpayers money to fix an unfixable situation. Everyone knows this area has been shifting since the 1960s. Just condemn the houses and face reality. Harsh but c'mon.
"building in the wrong place for coastal slide impacts [is an] outlier" Come to WA state, you just described the entire north peninsula and major swaths of Seattle. Rich people LOVE building houses where they don't belong and selling them to suckers for "Muh View"
I have an easy answer, but nobody with a stake is going to like it. The state declares a safety emergency and takes it all by eminent domain, paying only the impaired value since it's unlivable. Then waters the slope until it fully fails and becomes stable. Locates the spring or whatever is causing the slip, and caps it to supply the water system, or channels it to prevent further erosion. Grades and terraces the slope with retention walls, installs utilities in permanently stable ground, and sells off any buildable area to developers with strict covenants regarding destabilization. Enough with the circus.
This has been going on for a very long time. Driving Portuguese Bend has always been a thrill ride. It's sad that all these people are without their homes, but local people have been watching this happen and waiting for the other shoe to drop. Shame about the Chapel. Always liked to go visit. Glad they are going to rebuild it.
This is such important information. I grew up in So Cal about 10-15 miles from Palos Verdes, and at UCLA in the '60s studied the geology of the state, What a revelation! Thanks to the many faults in the state, inumerable unstable locations have been built on to the max. Often the hills and cliffs are just too scenic to pass up, espcially if you are uninformed., or just venal. Closer to where I live now, the town of Pacifica (where the San Andreas fault goes out to sea) has lost quite few homes over the years to landslides. The affected lots have been tidied up so there is no sign of what happened. . I would not be surprised if in the future adjacent lots tumble. People never seem to learn.
After my mom left the PV area she went inland, and one had to cross the San Andreas fault on HWY 14. It cuts right over it and in the years immediately after I watched these small developments go up Right On the Faultline. I mean, really? ? ? It's nuts. And if you have just a little knowledge (for me one year of college geology) it is stunning that more people don't have any clue. this stuff should be taught in high school, basics anyway!
This is not due specifically to tectonic faults, but to sedimentary layers which include clay. With uplift, the clay layers tilt away from the slope. When the clay gets wet, it slips.
California is a corrupt dystopia and there isn't a developer on the west coast that gives one shit about wetlands, watersheds and flood planes. They care about how fast the house will sell and for how much. Rich people only care about status and nothing shouts status like "ha ha I can build wherever the fuck I want" City council and the planning department are the most crooked parasites on earth. They become city engineers because a government job is the best place for them to hide their incompetence.
Before the development ever began, before the Crenshaw road improvement incident. That area in Palos Verdes was surveyed, and the civil engineers stated that there should not be any building on that land. Money changed hands, and the developers were given permission to build. The whole area is toast. It truly sucks. But, there’s no way that area can be saved. Palos Verdes in now the poster child for shady developers. And… Sea level rise will drown New Orleans within two decades. Visit before it’s gone, if you can. It’s a fabulous place, a birthplace of so much of great American Music, and it’s gonna drown.
For those that do not know, from a 1989 study published in the Journal Science Direct: The Portuguese Bend landslide, in coastal southern California, is an active, slow-moving mass of blocks and debris that extends from the shoreline to moderate altitudes along part of the southerly margin of the Palos Verdes Hills. These hills form a peninsula that is underlain by Cenozoic sedimentary and volcanic rocks draped anticlinally over a core of Mesozoic schist. In the southerly parts of the peninsula, inherently weak units in the Altamira Shale Member of the Miocene Monterey Formation dip seaward in general concordance with the ground surface. Ground failure has been widespread in this area. It evidently began in mid- to late-Pleistocene time, and it has continued intermittently to the present. The Portuguese Bend landslide represents a reactivation of movement of the eastern part of a complex of prehistoric landslides occupying an area of approximately two square miles. This latest episode of movement began in 1956, presumably in response to placement of fill during a road construction project. The active slide subsequently was enlarged by sequential failure of adjoining blocks of ground, and by September 1969 about 54,500,000 metric tons of debris was slowly moving downslope in an area of approximately 104 ha. Movement has been continuous since recent failure began in 1956, although the velocity of the active slide decreased markedly after that year. Between 1962 and 1972 the velocity fluctuated only slightly about an average value of about 1 cm per day. The active slide is an irregular prism, roughly triangular in plan view. The southern side of the triangle trends approximately 1100 m east-west along a stretch of shoreline that essentially coincides with the toe of the slide. The other two sides of the triangle trend northeast and northwest from the ends of the toe and meet about 1200 m north of the shoreline. The thickness of the moving mass differs considerably from one place to another, reflecting both topographic irregularities and major undulations in the underlying surface of movement. The maximum thickness is approximately 75 m. Movement is occurring along a distinct basal failure surface. The eastern part of the slide is underlain by bedrock, and is bordered by bedrock with a general structure that limits further deep-seated propagation of failure to the east and northeast. In contrast, the western part of the slide is underlain and bordered by extensive ancient landslide deposits that are marginally stable. Further encroachment of the active slide westward and northwestward into these materials was viewed as a distinct possibility at the time the dissertation was prepared and has occurred since then. Continued movement of the Portuguese Bend landslide since 1956 has been due to four main factors. A rise in the water table during the period 1957-1968 has been documented in the northwestern part of the moving mass and is attributable mainly to infiltration of surface runoff entering numerous open fissures that cut the surface of the slide. The toe of the active slide daylights along the shoreline and is subjected to storm-wave erosion, so that any natural build-up of resisting forces is prevented in this area. The redistribution of mass as the slide has moved along an undulatory failure surface has been responsible for local fluctuations in the driving and resisting forces. Finally, smoothing of irregularities in the failure surface by the moving slide mass must have decreased some of the forces resisting movement.
Great info! But the rate of slide has greatly accelerated, and we know now that there is a deeper source for the instability. Something like 160 feet down, rather than the 30 that had been the primary concern. Of course that changes the cost and feasibility of potential solutions. Plus we don't know what we don't know. The risk of huge problems that can't be identified with current technology is ever present. I would have tossed the hot potato to the next buyer a long time ago, especially since insurance won't cover any, or perhaps most, of any potential damage. I've lived behind levees. Same risk analysis with different facts. Where I grew up, it was tornadoes, floods and ice storms. To quote Roseanne Roseannadanna, it's always something!
@@RockandRollWoman Yes, 75 meters = 250 feet. When researching I also found that gov't entities were taken to court by developers over the years after trying to halt development of the area. The developers won in court. And here we are!!
Thanks for the review of RPV landslide. This video was very informative. I grew up in RPV (since 1974) but live currently in a nearby beach city to the north. My parents still live in RPV but north of the slide area. The road that is located in the slide area is a main roadway to exit the Palos Verdes peninsula to the south and also the southern access to the Terranea resort (former Marineland site) and the Trump golf course. I used the road very often when I went to college and also to commuted to work. A few comments: The pipes you guessed were sewer are sewer force mains. RPV is mostly Republican and shows up blue on the map because it is included with Los Angeles County on the map. There was a long moratorium on building in the slide area for a long time but when the slide movement slowed down (during one of the many droughts) the city foolishly lifted the moratorium ( I am sure there was a lot of political pressure to do this from the property owners). I have been told (need to fact check this) that RPV had to assume liability for the slide area as a concession to the LA county in order to incorporate as an independent city. Growing up in RPV I noticed that the road through the slide area always cracks during wet winters and stays in good shape during droughts. Also I have noticed that after wet winters artesian springs pop up in spots along the cliffs around April and seem to flow until the water pressure drops. My guess is that the wet winters and some of the water that gathers in the mountains of the LA basin percolate to the water table and as the watertable rises some of it flows to the ocean where is increases the water pressure. And also as the ground moves i am sure the storm drain concrete segmental pipe sections crack or gaps form and water leaks out. I doubt the city has the money to inspect all of the storm drain pipes (some of which would be difficult to access or to remote camera). There is another video (about ten years old if I remember correctly) on youtube by a former RPV councilman that discussed some of the history and previous failed attempts to slow or stop the slide.
Forgot to mention that although the slide area has always been moving, the current homes (sea view area) and Wayfarers Chapel that are located on the fringes of the slide area have been relatively stable in the past recent history. It appears they are being affected by the older, deeper slide whereas the main road was being affected by the newer shallower slide. I believe the deeper slide was only discovered during current explorations although the ancient scars can be seen from arial views. Very sad to see that Wayfarers Chapel had to be dismantled.
Thank you for your great comments. I think you have characterized the situation well with the groundwater. I think they were quite surprised to discover the much deeper slide plane at a depth of around 330 feet. There will be no quick or easy fix to this situation (if there is a fix to be had).
I lived in Torrance in the 80s. Portuguese Bend area of RPV has always been on the move. But it’s far far worse now. I’m following this story and I just feel terrible for these folks. They certainly can’t sell and many won’t be able to continue to live there. What a horrible situation. Personally, I would just cut bait and leave. But that’s me. So sad. I really can’t fathom how this can be remedied. I was so excited when I saw your post. I’m subscribed and watch all your posts. Thank you‼️
I would have tossed the hot potato to the next buyer years ago. I live near the ocean, and I'm constantly evaluating the risks of earthquake or climate change damage to my property. I have earthquake insurance. When I lived behind a levee, I paid for flood insurance. Bottom line, the responsibility to protect my investment is mine, and mine alone. If I couldn't insure a known significant risk, I'd move. But my neighbor, in her 80s with no children, doesn't have earthquake insurance. She decided that if her home is destroyed or significantly damaged, she'll move to senior housing. She also views it as 100 % her responsibility. We must evaluate the risks we know, and make a conscious choice. If we don't, it's not the government's problem. Government money comes from other people's pockets. It's not free.
I use to live in the Los Angeles area, and use to scuba dive in that particular area, for years. That one section of PV (how the locals refer to Palos Verde) has been moving for decades. There actually are buildings on it. Many with "jack systems", to occasionally level them. Also, utility lines, such as the water mains, are not buried there, and just left on the side of the road.
Twenty year ago I visited friends in Rancho Palos Verdes and we drove to the beach. There was a sign on the road that said “roadway in continuous motion next xxx miles”. Above, you could see the hoses cantilevered out over the slope. The ground was made of ocean bottom- loose shells and dirt, scraped off the sea floor by the plate motion. This could not have been a surprise, except that it was too slow to see it coming.
The majority of the homes are inside that zone and everyone knows. The slip zone has widened though, capturing more off to the southern end. Theres a risk it will get much wider and affect rolling hills. Thats why stabilization is important. Those in the zone are a full loss.
I was there in 2015 and on the Pacific Coast Highway (I think it was - it was the main coastal road) - it was rolling up & over finger like hummocks & you could see the continuous asphalt distortions & the above around utility pipes - which I though weird at the time but now I know it's the only way for them to not get ripped apart when the ground inevitably slips & dips.
Yup when I have been in PV never have seen any solid rock there cept some spots, but most seems compressed rock and sand and now I have learned it all sits on top of volcanic ash…which melts during rain or rain/sprinkler water leaking into the ground
Looking at the ground movement map, this area has moved more than 4 ft. since this time last year. Currently it is 1" per day. The layer of bentonite underlying this area has turned from a solid rock like layer before the rains of the last couple years to a soft wet clay, acting as a viscus slope.
I have been following this closely. Thank you for such an informative video. My daughter/family lived in Portuguese Bend right at Palos Verdes Drive. The house was built mid 1950’s and my son n law put a lot of work, time, money into it rebuilding the foundation & walls. It was a beautiful home surrounded with lovely trees and gorgeous horse property. On a clear day you could see Catalina from the patio. Almost 300 days a year you didn’t need a heater or fans, the weather was just perfect. It was the place our families gravitated to for holidays. I was so sad when they sold & moved away but it was providence. There is a price you pay for living in such a lovely area.
My dad's old house on Crescent Ave in Palos Verdes dropped off into the sea a few years ago. His house was about 100 yards from the cliff in the '70's. So that's how much erosion has occurred in the last 50 years. It was a beautiful custom house. No one had built in those areas of Palos Verdes when I was living there in the '70's because of the landslide danger but greed led the planning dept to allow building. Sad for homeowners.
Thanks for your coverage on this. I live about 60 miles north, and the local news never goes into the technical information. Your coverage is outstanding, sufficient for a technically curious audience without delving too deep into theory and equations. Also interesting to note the mayor is a registered CE. I always wonder how our government would be if more politicians were engineers and scientists.
This is a great tape and has easy to understand! But honestly, we lived out there, next door to this area, in the 1980's and large areas had already slid down the hill before then. I cannot understand why development at anything other than at your own risk in that area is allowed. It was obvious then that the whole area should be condemned.
The best technical summary presented on this subject. Kudos! The actual slide reminds me of an old comedian George Carlin show titled 'saving the planet,' where he asks why people build a house next to an active volcano, then wonder why lava is running through the living room. As with the Millennium Tower boondoggle, as one viewer noted, time to call in engineer Ron Hamburger to remedy the situation.
@@CaseyJones-EngineerThank you for your response, Casey! I enjoy all your videos - explaining complicated engineering challenges in a logical and sensible matter-of-fact format. Living on the eastern slope of the Palos Verdes peninsula, the soil under our neighborhood appears to be much more stable, and hopefully will not begin to move. The actual slide area is but a small portion of the entire peninsula, yet still a tragedy for those living on that moving piece of land, which has been occurring over many decades.
Last year, I found Whats going on with shipping due to the tragic Titan implosion. I found this channel due to the tragic Dali crash. You make good videos.
I grew up in Rolling Hills on Chuckwagon Road in 1957. It was known about the land slides back then. Geologists and contractors warned people not to build in certain areas. What a terrible shame / tragedy people are losing their homes. Very sad.
State officials aren't visiting because that would give the impression the state is going to foot the bill for saving hundreds of multi-million dollar mansions. I can't think of worse optics for a politician.
The mayor and county supervisor are ever present, the latter promising governmental help - but it would have to be paid for by the State or the Feds. The amount required to save fewer than 200 homes is going to be astonishing. I've lived behind levees. I once had a cat who fell into the slurry mix in a trench when Sacramento was building a 60 foot deep, 3 foot wide slurry wall to keep water from undermining the earthen levees. Fortunately he came into bed coated with the mud and cement slurry mix, and I was able to bathe him before he could groom himself and wind up with hardened intestines. Where I grew up, it was tornadoes, floods and ice storms. To quote Roseanne Roseannadanna, it's always something!
LA County will still send them all their property tax bills :P. With any luck you're far enough away from the survey marker(s) they referenced and now "your property" has no improvements you have to pay taxes on.
The modern massive movement of the Palos Verdes landslide first started back in the mid 1950s when Crenshaw Blvd was extended to the south. I recall watching TV when I was six years old and it was “big news” at that time.
When purchasing my Northern California home, the loan company required a "hazards study". Had the house been located on a slide, I would have been required to add a rider to the insurance policy. This is just COMMON SENSE which seems to be in shout supply these days.
I've lived in southern California for 30 years and this has always been a problem. For years, the road across the slide would have to be repaved/restriped every month or two. After the last dewatering effort was completed, it seemed to get get better. I guess it's hard to stop mother nature
I graduated from Palos Verdes high school in 1963 we'd drive pass Portuguese Bend to school and several times had to turn around and go the long way around through Rolling Hills to get to school because overnight the road dropped over a foot.
Great Job, Casey. No, your homeowner's insurance does not cover this. The Portugese Bend area in Palos Verdes reminds me of Bluebird Canyon in Laguna Beach and La Conchita, further north on 101, where things are moving all the time. Some places are not good spots for development. The government cannot stop the land from moving by passing a law. Most non-engineers, sadly, do not get this.
I grew up over 100 miles south of there in La Jolla, CA. There was a landslide along the east side of Soledad Mountain Road in 2007. In 1984, I worked on two new construction homes built a few hundred feet south of where the slide would be. I was working with my father at the time, he recalled a landslide in that area that destroyed several homes under construction. We asked the superintendent on the job if they were aware of the past landslides, he said they were and that there were concrete caissons "down to bedrock". I later learned that this area was old undersea floor that was an ancient uplift. The city denied any responsibility for the slide due to leaking water mains, they did remediation and today there are homes on this site once again.
Peak internet benefit. Thank you so much for giving background to a story that is tragic and interesting. The fact that there is such latitude for potential solutions only heightens the need for information that can enlighten the public. Maybe we are going to need a department of differential cost benefit analysis.
Thank you for checking it out. This situation is a disaster for those people living there as you say. I think there should be a little more empathy from some people for these people that are impacted. After all, there is something risky about just about every place somebody lives (tornados, earthquakes, landslide, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, etc.).
Everyone in Rancho Palos Verdes knows that it's a landslide area. The government cannot stop major landslides. Some people must move and let the earth do what it does.
Thank you for covering this issue. Palos Verdes was one of my mother's favorite areas of California. It's so sad to see this happening. But I agree with you, it's not a sustainable situation. Please continue coverage of this area.
Hire Ron Hamburger, The King Of Underpinning. He can underpin the entire coast of Southern California, with just 8 pilings. I'm sure he'll set things straight!
I think the Millenium Tower is wobbling from all of us in San Francisco giggling right now. I feel for wanting to live near paradise, I just have no feelings for people who want to live near paradise on the cheap, and in this case FULL KNOWLEDGE of where they lived. As in, California has the most strict disclosure laws in the country. Any government official should stay a long legal distance away from this mess.
Outstanding comment. Unfortunately the government political guru's keep putting on a show for the constituents that got them elected in the first place. " Hey John and Jane Doe candidates, I've got a check for your upcoming campaign for 10k. Our neighborhood needs a little work?" SSDD. Yeah, the Hamburger Engineering Group. 🍔 Extra pickles please.
Thank you, great update, and summary of a complicated multi-layered situation. We lived and grew up on the Hill (learned to swim in the PBC clubhouse pool) and married at Wayfarers, now retired and looking to move back to PV, and wonder where it is safe. I assume north of Hawthorne could be better than south of Hawthrone!
In California, there are many places that were initially very attractive as home/mansion locations and then became very dangerous to live in. Most known are homes build right on ocean cliffs. Every few years you see the news showing entire properties sliding towards the ocean. Many of those cliffs and some other elevated locations were approved for limited development only to be later overdeveloped, in the 90-ties and early 2000s. The best example is the 2005 Bluebird Canyon Slide in Laguna Beach, CA. Somewhere in the late sixties, early seventies, a geologist approved some additional development, bur stated that the very top of the hill could not be built on, because that would induce shifting of the soil. In early 2000s, two additional houses had been erected, one exactly on the top of the hill. The owner of that property was a very powerful political figure and simply could not have been refused anything. The construction involved removal of large quantities of soil and putting 55 hundred square foot house. In June of 2005, a water main cracked near the top of the hill, saturated the soil and caused the landslide. However, in order to secure federal funding, the city blamed the disaster on prior winter's profuse precipitation.
Amazing report. I grew up in the area and walked and drove a jeep all over Portuguese Bend. I always heard debris from expanding Crenshaw triggered the slide, but this is the first time I heard the cut severed the toe of the slide. I always thought it odd the debris could cause the slide because most of the debris was pushed off the downhill side of the cut at the top of the ridge. The remaining debris was used as fill across some canyons but never enough I always thought to trigger the slide.
The news and the people living over there need to hear this video in its entirety. You have explained it in a more concise way more than the media. I feel for these people but they knew about this since when you said. That area is going to end up like the sunken city in San Pedro unfortunately.
Casey- also in the past decades there have been many high ranking officials who were totally against development of this area but the house developers got their way. I think the solution of this problem will greatly exceed the value of the homes especially since there is already extensive damage to many many homes. I think unlimited money will not solve this problem.
@@hippiebits2071 But not all the houses do, many are newer, at least it looks that way in the Seaview area, I don't even remember that being there in the 70's though I do remember further south developments.
I went with a geology class in the 70's. Potuguese Bend was a notable place of interest. As we wound up our bus field trip, the professor quizzed us on what steps should be taken to try to address some of the challenges. He also quizzed us on what should not be done.
Definitely additional watering of greenbelts shouls be avoided. As we turned a bend in the road overlooking a cliff we saw newr builds and lots of sprinklers watering the folliage. Would love to know who signef off on that.
Thank you so much for speaking about this. I live in Rancho Palos Verdes and just came home from the city council meeting and feel very let down by the surface details provided. I live well above the evacuation area. My neighborhood is at the top of that hill where Crenshaw ends. I grew up here and came back to look after my elderly Mom. I appreciate the details you are providing about what is actually happening. I wonder if you could speak to worse case sc enario? I question the integrity of the whole hillside. Is that something to be worried about? Also, there is an empty damn/resevior at the corner of PV drive North and PV drive West. Could rain water be diverted to that? BTW, I completely agree that dumping money into this is like pouring water in a bucket with a hole at the bottom. Houses should never have been built there.
There is really no way this guy could responsibly answer your questions with any certainty unfortunately. Even those working the project are faced with many unknowns. My heart goes out to everyone living in there. It’s a beautiful area and I can completely understand those wanting to stay if at all possible.
My client owns Smith Emery, a testing and engineering firm on the west coast and has a house in this area, his is in the Flying Triangle. He has a lot of knowledge to the cause of the slide going on back to the 50s.
A lot of the houses in his area are sitting on steel frames with cribbing underneath that can be adjusted as the land movers. When the doors start to stick it’s time to level it out again.
@@butterflywoodworks2374 Should've decided on pontoon-style mega houses instead. Just inflate the sinking side until the next movement. Eventually, they'll would've had a houseboat on the Pacific. Too bad
Malibu had a landslide in the Sweetwater Mesa area. Everyone on the hill sued everybody and anybody. The land all along the Pacific coast is mostly unstable and overbuilt. Topanga Canyon had a mudslide this winter that shut down the highway for a few weeks. The mountains are steep and when the rain hits hard it makes for a bad combination.
Cool! I had to pick a direction in science, but I wanted to learn them all. Now that I'm retired, I can watch guys like you tell me about a day at your job. I love it. I wish I could have lived 100 lives to learn everyones job im detail.
Some friends of mine lived in Rolling Hills on the other side of the hill overlooking the port, and had a smaller landslide in their backyard that just barely missed the house. They've since sold it and moved.
I lived in Rolling Hills Estates on the top of the Palis Verdes Peninsula from 1958 to 1965. The whole peninsula is an orphan piece of the Pacific tectonic plate the forms an escarpment rising independently from the Catalina Channel. It is formed from sedimentary rock with forty to fifty feet of top cover soil. Between the overlayment and the base rock is a layer of dry, powdery clay anywhere from two to ten feet thick. As an escarpment, the base sedimentary rock has been pushed up into slanted layers. That means that if the overpayment is opened, water can enter the subsoil underground and run, unseen, down hill. As long as the overpayment remains intact, everything is stable. 14:56 However, as you correctly noted, several main streets running south from LA were cut through the overlayment. As an escarpment, the sides of rise, called Mt. San Pedro, are very steep. In order to reach the top without switchbacks, the builders cut the roadway into the side and top of the hill, opening the subsoil clay to the elements. Then, in the early 1960’s, the overpayment soils on the opposite (south) side of the hill began to slide. That is the Portuguese Bend area. Even while we lived on the north side of the hill, overlooking scenic Torrance, CA, I kept hearing that PV would become more and more expensive for existing homes because the whole western and southern facing sides of the hill were unsafe for any future building. I guess greed is more powerful than common sense.
I was probably 10 years old when I saw a landslide in San Diego Ca in La Jolla ,5 houses were rolling down on a hill,sixty years later that area was fully build and another landslide was bringing down 3 other houses in the same hill,city gov new the problem and still permitted new construction there ,with banks and builders everything is all about the money,they don’t care about geological problems ,especially in such an expensive area,they will build,and build !
These owners have not been able to expand their homes etc for a while. Even those in surrounding area have significant building and reoair restrictions
I know this goes against most people’s expectations, but if homes are condemned is that area , wouldn’t it be safer to ban any structures or roads from being built in the future.
"Adela", and there's the same EXACT mentality, about SoCal's wildfire burns. When the conflagrations strike, more people go to pieces, than become heroes; the former will inevitably interfere against the heroes.
Condemned? Heck, realtors are on TH-cam featuring some of these homes showing all the cracked ceilings, buckled floors, wonky brickwork and hoping by lowering the price from $3M to $2,000,000, someone will buy! One huge house actually went into escrow for $1.45M the other day but then it fell through. (No pun intended.) It is right on the corner where the biggest holes have opened. I feel terribly sorry for people who have lived there their whole lives and are losing a tremendous amount of equity. I also do not think the American taxpayers should have to cover the bill.
@@hippiebits2071 Yes, but they are paying property taxes to their county just as I pay property taxes for my house to my county. If an earthquake destroys my house I have paid a lot extra for 43 years to cover my house in the event of an earthquake. I wouldn’t expect other people to cover my loss. I actually think the residents of Palos Verde, if they can prove that they did not know they were buying a home in a slide area, should be able to sue the original builders, seller or realtor if there is no clause in their contract proving they were made aware of the situation.
Great explanation of complex topics. All aspects are addressed without promoting a specific position. Logical conclusions can be drawn from your presentation of facts. Thank you for this and other videos that tell it like it is and allows thise impacted to take appropriate action.
"Great explanation of complex topics. All aspects are addressed without promoting a specific position. " In other words, Money talks and bullshits walks!"
Reminds me of Brienz-Brinzauls here in the south-east of Switzerland thats been sliding for decades. And the discussion around „How much is too much?“ got even more intense when part of the mountain above this pretty little village came crashing down, stopping just a few dozen meters before hitting the houses. It‘s definitely not easy to balance the different interests! Thx for the time and effort you put into these well balanced videos 👍!
Thank you. Yes, it is seldom the case that a cost/benefit analysis is done in these situations. People expect their political leaders to take action in these situations even if the efforts prove to be futile.
I recall a case decades ago where people built homes on the Atlantic side of Long Island NY. Developers told buyers that breakwaters would be built in the future. No breakwaters were ever planned. A comment offered was ‘Don’t build your house in the teeth of the North Atlantic!’ I.e. use common sense. I am not an engineer, but shouldn’t common sense dictate that you do not build where there is evidence that the development is on loose earth. I live in Mass. and follow your videos on the bridge in RI. It’s a mess. Little Rhody and Providence are notorious for mob corruption. A local station did a story which followed repairs on the bridge going back to the 70’s. Lots of money spent for no results, past is prelude. You do a great service by presenting factual and researched videos.
The picture used in the post is where I grew up. The old 1956 slide aleays stopped at the canyon to the west called Klondike canyon. Now the slide has penetrated big time into the Sea :View housing tract at Dauntless Ave. Tragic. The old Vanderlip estate area at Abalone Cove is now on roller skates. Nobody will be able to sell a home at anywhere near matket value in these areas even if your street is stable.
I have a cousin who owns a home in this area. His house is not affected, yet... He tells me that police cars are parked on the street leading to the blackout areas and proof of residency is required to enter. The power company is laying out new power lines and installing new transformers, most of the houses will be reconnected over the next 3 weeks. 20-30 homes are directly involved in the current slide and the owners of these homes have been told that power cannot be restored, and they are living there under threat of an emergency evacuation.
Cops are acting as guards for rich neighborhoods and illegally preventing people from freedom of movement in public spaces? Oh, wait, it's California they don't give a shit about the constitution or civil rights.
Do you mind if I ask you some sincere questions? Why did your cousin decide to buy in that area. I live in Texas, and any condition/situation affecting the stability and safety of the property would have to be disclosed prior to sale. I assume it’s the same in CA, and he would’ve been aware of landslide potential. Is he able to get homeowners insurance? Is he considering selling? Is his home sellable? Homes are currently selling in this area. Does he know who’s buying? Has his property value changed? Sorry for so many questions, but I would like to hear about the situation from the perspective of a resident. Thank you in advance if you are able to respond.
This has been moving for years. In the 1980's I knew people in the Portuguese Bend area how were dealing with their land sliding down the hill. They were constantly jacking up their home and putting cinder blocks under their house to keep it as level as possible. It was a cycle that was recurring almost daily. They eventually lost their home. I remember driving out to their place and the road was repaved nearly daily, along with the water and sewer lines that, at this point, were all above ground level and could be seen on the side of the road as you drove north toward where Marineland (at this time was) was. It was so sad. They lost everything and they weren't covered by insurance. A few years (maybe a decade) ago some land owners sued the city to allow them to build on their land in the slide area AND THEY WON!! How crazy its that?!?! I feel sorry for those poor souls that bought and built in the slide area, but if you don't do your due diligence then who's fault is ii really? I remember going up in the sky view tower at Marineland and seeing the landslide scar in the hillside above the Palos Verdes foothills. It was so easy to see that the whole area was unstable.
Excellent video and graphics. In particular the zooming of the map shows the area in context. The big red arrow made it dirt simple (can I say that?) to figure out what you are referring to. Keep up the good work! :)
It’s almost like they’re just sitting on their hands waiting for the infrastructure to fall apart or slide away. Smh I’m kinda glad the mayor is frustrated. They’ll likely keep it sustainable until they stop getting buyers…. Again, fantastic presentation of facts. Thank you Casey 🙏
Instead of spending all of that money to shore up the homes, wouldn't it be wiser to give the money to those 20 to 30 homeowners to move...!!! NOTHING will keep the land from sliding....
If you analyze party registration at a finer grain, you will see that the Palos Verdes Peninsula is indeed a part of Los Angeles County with a Republican majority. I represented parts of the Palos Verdes Peninsula in the California Legislature from 1992 - 2006, though never as far south as Rancho Palos Verdes. City Council races are nonpartisan, on the surface only. RPV and most of the small cities on the peninsula have all or almost all Republican council members. Nice analysis. Best I've found on TH-cam.
Who cares whether they were Republicans or Democrats. The entire coastal area of California are Democrats and they've screwed up all of the coastal regions. LOOK IT UP...!!
When he put up that map and it showed blue….I was shaking my head no…..these are manly rich people and the majority will be republicans, glad you posted same.
Landslides come to a point when they stop sliding. This point is called the "toe", the slide is shaped kinda like a foot. When a slide stops, it is backed up on the toe. If you take a bulldozer and cut the toe off, slides will frequently start moving again. There are several toes in several slide areas in this event, the biggest toe is offshore a few hundred yards... The waves come in and break up the toe, wash the material out, and the slide keeps moving to refill the washed out material.
@@rtqii But wasn't the construction happening higher up the hill on Crenshaw blvd when this happened? I don't know what you would call it, the "ankle"?
Great example of the "sunk cost" concept ... stop the bleeding of $$$$ and energy and move on. I've lived within a couple miles of this area my entire live, it's always been moving. Very informative video, thank you.
Thank you. I think they are in the mode of spending money and having short-term stabilization but this deeper and greater slide (reactivation of the ancient slide) is far different and is unlikely to be effectively remediated.
I took a geology class field trip to this area in the 1980’s. It was already bad then. Some houses were cracked severely or collapsed, and the water and sewer lines were already in the pipes you see above ground. There were some houses that had fallen off of the edge of an inland canyon as well. In this case there was a steep angle to the sedimentary layers. The weight of the houses was too much so they slipped off the edge of the side of the small canyon where the sedimentary layers were angled downward on the edge of the canyon. I was surprised to see a lot of new looking houses then. With the record historic amounts of rainfall we received last winter, I sure it accelerated the slides in this area. This whole area should have been made a city park decades ago as the soil and geologic features in the area cannot support the weight of all those houses.
Thought of you when I read about the landslides in Palos Verde. Terrible situation for the homeowners (and the city government). But who/how were all these developments approved when there was evidence of ancient and contemporary land movement? The trail of development approval would be a good subject for an investigative journalist. And, finally, how common are these ancient landslide areas in southern California?
California, aka "paradise" is a massive revamp of mother nature. Witness the Central Valley Project where twenty-two massive dams where built in the Sierra Nevada foothills in the 1950s and 1960s to prevent the melting of the winter snow pack from turning the Central Valley into a lake. Not only are there these massive dams but hundreds of miles of levies along the Sacramento, American, Merced, Feather, and other rivers to keep them from overflowing and flooding metropolitan areas such as Sacramento, Stockton, Yuba/Marysville. I lived in a house built in 1923 it like other houses built before Folsom Dam, Oroville, and Shasta Dam were built in the 1950s had flood basements. Every winter and spring Sacramento would flood, but damage was limited as the basement was built ABOVE ground level would flood and not the living area above and assessable by walking up several steps. The flood basement was where a boat was stored to be used as transportation. Old Sacramento at the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers was built on top of twenty-two feet of catacombs which flooded.
I took a geology class at UC Long Beach in 1965 and the geology professor discussed that houses were being built on an active Palos Verde land slide, and that movement would occur in the future because the toe of the land slide was being excavated for
roads. This was a predicable event.
Yep, similar story in the 90s. Portuguese Bend Tuff was never stable. That area should have been put aside as a park or something.
What is the "toe" area? That sounds like the bottom of the hill, but weren't they working on the top of the hill to extend Crenshaw blvd when this all started?
There is no such institution as "UC Long Beach". Perhaps you meant SE Missouri State or Bryn Mawr.
. It is Cal State Long Beach. Is on the south end of PCH as you enter Long Beach.
@@dcole9589 Yes, a fine school, but part of the California State University system, rather than the University of California schools.
As a native California I‘be known about this unstable place since the late fifties. I am in my early eighties. I have hired geologists to check houses with small cracks and been warned not to buy in some areas. I am fascinated to find your podcast as I I been following the rather meager news closely. Thanks, Pat
I lived in the area in the late sixties. That area was always moving. No one should claim that this is new.
Never underestimate peoples ability to wilfully ignore blatantly obvious problems and convince themselves that surely it will be fine, nothing bad will happen to Them.
Stupid is as stupid does! 😊
Than you!
Why do they build on geologically unstable ground? No sense.
@@DaveP-uv1mlI lived there for 10 years! It’s dreamy😊
As a former resident of Rancho Palos Verdes who observed this ongoing problem for decades, I don't believe it can be remedied. The site will have to be permanently abandoned.
No amount of tax dollars will ever stabilize this slope. --- Thanks uploading factual information. ---
It sounds like a money pit!
Thats probably bs. Stabilizing the area will stop it widening as much. The current zone is a full loss, yes, but stopping it reaching rolling hills where the money is at will be a priority
Environmentalists down there in SoCal won't like you saying that.
@@generalpatton838the entire area around Los Angeles is slip prone poorly consolidated dirt…
It’s been shattered for centuries by repeated earthquakes.
Why did they allow building in this area? Oh yeah, corporate greed. Since the 1950’s? Buyer beware, the feds should not be involved in rebuilding mistakes only to fail again.
It's an ancient slide and it's just going to keep moving until the entire slump falls into the water. You can't remediate that.
Agreed. RPV looking to bore nine holes at 5 million each too. Waste of money. Gonna keep moving.
People want to live in scenic areas. Developers want to build in scenic areas. They put immense pressure on local politicians to allow development of scenic areas. But scenic areas are often hazardous areas. That means they become expensive areas. The residents and developers want to shift the costs of ownership onto everyone else. They want their scenic areas subsidized by insurance companies and public funding of remediation.
Insurance companies won’t be paying a nickel. Ground movement is not a covered loss under any insurance policy.
yep. A sand cliff gave way in my hometown and killed an entire family in their sleep, directly on the water. A year later another portion gave way and just missed another home by inches. The city condemned about half the homes but not homes on either side of the death house, figure that one out. Jump forward 20 years and according to Zillow that stretch of road now has about half a dozen brand new AirBnBs on it. They built some sort of wall that frankly has zero chance of holding back the cliff if it decides to give way again and it will its freaking sand.
and don't forget, the city gets the property tax revenue from those $2m+ homes......that's all gone if they condem them.
Out where I live, the fad is to build kindiling up against homes and then complain loudly when a forest fire passes through (something that's actually healthy for the trees here). People be stupid.
Dynamite is cheap.
I lived in Rolling Hills Estates on the top of the Palis Verdes Peninsula from 1958 to 1965. The whole peninsula is an orphan piece of the Pacific tectonic plate the forms an escarpment rising independently from the Catalina Channel. It is formed from sedimentary rock with forty to fifty feet of top cover soil. Between the overpayment and the base rock is a layer of dry, powdery clay anywhere from two to ten feet thick. As long as the overlying soil is intact, everything is stable. 14:56
However, as you correctly noted, several main streets running south from LA were cut through the overlayment. As an escarpment, the sides of rise, called Mt. San Pedro, are very steep. In order to reach the top without switchbacks, the builders cut the roadway into the side and top of the hill, opening the subsoil clay to the elements. Then, in the early 1960’s, the overpayment soils on the opposite (south) side of the hill began to slide. That is the Portuguese Bend area.
Even while we lived on the north side of the hill, overlooking scenic Torrance, CA, I kept hearing that PV would become more and more expensive for existing homes because the whole western and southern facing sides of the hill were unsafe for any future building. I guess greed is more powerful than common sense.
Imagine the value of the land now. Might be $50+million.
What happened to the. Theory its. An ancient volcano. None of these idiots know what it sits on honestly. People just keep yappin their lips
Greed is indeed more powerful than common sense. Just look at the fossil fuel industry and climate change.
Portuguese Bend has been moving my entire life. When you drive on the road up there it was always bumpy and the service pipes were always above ground. It may be much worse now but the movement is a surprise to no one.
We have around 200 years of records of that area moving. 😆
I remember my hish school taking a field trip to see the slide are back in the late 1970s.
The road is still bumpy and the pipes are still above ground.
One of our favorite cruising routes in early seventies, go up there and smoke weed at the chapel. 😂
Yep lived in south bay all my life, and we always drove around PV and to Marineland and the Glass Church the road was always bumpy, those gas lines on that sharp dip up and down on the road were always smelling bad with gas ever since I can remember! We went for a drive around the back bend…omg the road is extremely much worse and bumpy, gas lines even more apparent with smell! The Glass Church is affected and they closed it, they are taking it apart to set somewhere else.
I took geology at Cal State in 1972. The instructor had occasionally been hired by people wanting to build in Southern Calif.. He'd do reports whether sites were geologically sound enough to build on. When he said, "no", the builder would simply hire a different geologist; then another, then another, until he found one that would say, "Yes. It's safe to build on that lot." The builder would then have a green light to apply for permits.
My husband worked for a geological company for 2 years taking a break from flight instruction. RPV hired the company in 1987 to see if there was some way of stopping the movement in Portuguese Bend. The Vice President of the company told the city at that time that there was no way of stopping the movement. What's interesting is that same company was hired to study a lot that 2 doctors from San Pedro Hospital wanted to build some townhomes near Western and 25th. The company told them not to build because the lot was unstable. The doctors told them if they put it in their report they would sue. The doctors then found another company that would allow them to build. They built on the lot and a few years later there was a huge crack that went through the lot destroying several townhomes. It ended up being a multi-million dollar lawsuit.
@@palace927 Who they gonna sue next, "Mother Nature"??
As a NC resident, I know personally of people whose homes on the Outer Banks have crumbled into the sea after decades of failed beach restoration efforts. Those whose homes are next in the path of the ocean still demand more sand at state expense. Taxpayers elsewhere in the state, including me, are frustrated with the unrealistic and essentially futile expense. If they buy their own sand and pump it in, fine, but they claim that tourism is something the whole state benefits from. I don’t know the answer except I know the sea will win, just like the landslide will in CA.
Thank you. The are way too many unsustainable activities going on these days and it's generally just about the money.
It is time for the state and federal governments to agree to say "enough is enough" to bail out people who insist on building and living in areas known and prone to these types of conditions repeatedly. Once one of these types of conditions is identified, no new construction should be allowed in the area, and help the people in the area to move to a non-threatened area.
I have seen houses built on stilts to be above floodwaters in known areas of flooding. Once a condition is determined then it is up to the landowner to decide if they want to take the chance to build and live there but not then expect the rest of the population to come in to save them from the harm they put themselves into. There are houses built on the river side of the levees in New Orleans that are inhabited and have utilities to them even though they pay no taxes because the house is on the batture or river side of a levee. This is a very common practice in that area and has been for over 100 years with the people knowing the danger and likelihood of floods and damage.
I lived on the beach in Indian River Shores FL just east of Vero Beach. The not so bright people in our county complained about the taxpayer money spent on rebuilding the beach. Close to 60% of the property taxes were paid from those homes on the barrier island. Many of the local jobs and stores were funded my spending from those people living on the island. Few if any households had kids in the public schools. I did the math. The tax money for schools that we didn't use was 4800% more than the sand. Plus we didn't replace sand every year. Our high taxes also covered the cost of firefighters, police, jails, roads and many other county services. I think that all new rebuilds or new construction in these zones should pony up the insurance money to cover future issues. The taxable value would drop because of the cost of insurance. I also think that if you don't set aside food and water for an Fema type event you should get billed for the handouts. Now poor people could get a credit. But it's easy to rinse out those 2 L. bottlers and store up drinking water before a storm. We can't fix stupid sometimes, but handing out money and goods isn't the way to teach people.
@@CaseyJones-Engineer Yes, the entire city of New Orleans should be moved to higher ground but they don't.
Western NC is not worried about beach erosion, and we don't want to pay for the poor choices of other people.
In 1957, I visited nearby Marineland and the now landslide-destroyed Wayfarers Chapel, both of which overlooked Portuguese Bend. I remember my father talking about the 1956 reactivation of an ancient landslide there. "Don't ever buy a house there," he said. Anyone who bought or built in that area since 1956 was either duped or in denial. Since then, the land has continued to move.
So awesome having someone explain this and other engineering issues to us all clearly and in detail - thanks Casey!
I appreciate your summaries. I'm in shock and awe just what is happening to the Palos Verdes area. It looks devastating. It seems like some city officials and others knew this was a big possibility. I always said, don't live by any coastlines, EVER! Landslides always eventually happen
Yes, this recent turn of events is likely to be a game changer relative to people realizing that stabilization efforts will likely be futile.
A better question is: Why did the City issue building permits to build homes on historically unstable land?
Rancho Palos Verdes had a moratorium on new builds several decades ago. But got sued. Google Monks vs. Rancho Palos Verdes. Interesting read!
@@thedaisyesmeralda Then I hope the RPV City attorney had a disclosure and a hold harmless clause in the permit process.
I left Cali 30 years ago. Sure glad my tax dollars not going to pay for folly like this.
@@la-gl4uhDon’t be so sure, FEMA picked up the tab for the landslides in Laguna Beach, late 70’s and 2005.
Money
Every engineer in USA should be subscribed to your site.
Thank you!
Give it up. Don't sink another penny into constantly shifting and sinking land. To hell with any clueless homeowners claiming ignorance of something that's been going on for centuries.
Its what the insurance companies are doing. Pricing appropriately for the risk, or deciding the risk is too great and not insuring at all.
Sunken city a whole development went over the cliff 100 years ago.
Governor Newson has already declared an emergency and has allocated money for the city
I agree with you if the homeowners were notified before purchase.
The City itself should have never zoned the area for development in the 1950s'
40 years ago when i was a teenager, i used to jump my car off the 5' drop offs on Portuguese Bend. That road was under constant construction due to the movement of the land. They've known about this since the 1950s. I can't believe they were allowed to build there in the first place.
Thank you for speaking in plain English. Thank God for engineers.
Thank you!
Yes, engineers who speak to the heft and might of the actual situation that is happening right there! But not all are able to see clearly, and want to keep trying to engineer the impossible. As a Californian, you do have to learn some geology. Thanks Casey Jones!! 😻
@@dancingcolorsVdeRegilGeology is fascinating. The difference between the alluvial material where I lived in Northern CA and the clay soil in the Olympia region in NW Washington have such unique issues.
I think this is exactly what those people signed up for. They knew the area was going to end up in the ocean, they just hoped it would happen after they died. Same goes for an awful lot of waterfront property elsewhere.
Don't blame the homeowners. They were probably lied to by the developers.
@@ninjalectualx What about the real estate agents; where were they, out taking a smoke?? Where the hell was their due diligence for their clients??
The Portuguese Bend area of Palos Verdes has suffered from land slippage since my earliest memories. Recall visiting Marineland of the Pacific as a kid 1960s and seeing the damaged houses and bumpy streets. What a beautiful area, with moderate coastal temperatures and a near-constant sea breeze.
PS - sorry to hear the Wayfarers Chapel has had to be disassembled.
PS2 - on September 3, 2024, California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in a Los Angeles suburb after officials announced they’d be cutting power to the area due to the threat of ongoing landslides.
And Portuguese Bend is not at the toe of the landslide as he mentioned but at the headscarp. I'm 70 years old and I know this has been going on for ever. Casey Jones is talking like this is knew and that there are solutions.
@@hikerJohnBased on what I just watched CJ is saying the contrary. Looks like this area doesn’t have much chance to be stabilized
@@jimfullam3908 He was complaining that the city was not trying to come up with a solution.
Please allow me to add a me2 at this point. I remember loving to visit Marineland. And the bend was a topic even then I heard my elders remark about. I moved into Hermosa Beach in the late 1970s; and, it seemed Portuguese Bend was a topic in the news darned near every day. This all was seen coming. But co-workers insisted on buying homes in the area. So what can I say other than I would resent having to pay to make these people whole again. They did it to themselves and should admit they screwed up. Then they can start over.
{^_^}
30 year Portuguese resident here. This can be slowed by de-watering wells but never stopped…city keeps issuing building permits and is partly to blame
Thanks!
Thank you, I appreciate your support!
I grew up near there. Fifty years ago, I was attending West L.A. College and had Mr. Connor for geology and oceanography. He would call this type of landside as "creep". We were reviewing for a test and Mr. Connor asked "Does anybody know what creep is"? A girl ahead of me raised her hand and said "I do". "Creep is the guy sitting next to me". There you have it, a little geology humor.
🤣🤣
Creep? It's an excellent Radiohead song! 🎶🎶🤣
After graduation, did she by any chance work for Palos Verdes in the housing permit office?
@@ezdeezytube Your sense of humor is as good as hers. That was 50 years ago, After that year, I never saw her again.
I was a geology major, but I don't remember much geology humor, other than "tuff schist" and the like.
The climate, air and views in Rancho PV are just wonderful.
Everyone was aware, 'sunken city' / Portuguese bend served as a living monument and constant reminder. I live in Torrance. Everyone knows PV is and has always been falling in to the sea. Like you said its very reminiscent of the people repeatedly rebuilding homes in areas that keep getting flooded by hurricanes. we should be encouraging all people living in these known hazardous regions to move elsewhere. I understand its difficult but spending incredible money per capita protected by the installations is not good civil policy
Sunken City is in San Pedro and nowhere near a geologic landslide area much less Portuguese Bend. Different cause and situation; Sunken City is normal coastal erosion.
@@jasonherring2419Different cause, but similar questions of public policy are at play - fundamental questions about the role of government in executing what I view as the prime directive: public safety.
Bottom line, the area is unsafe, remediation is not possible, and the people living in that area should move. All along the California coast, the same thing - land is falling back to the sea.
If the climate is really warming up significantly ocean levels will rise. It will not take much to leave Florida and NYC/Manhattan Island looking very very different from what we have now. At what point do we decide area ZZZ is a cultural heritage site and work to save it rather than simply tell the people there despite warnings to suck it up. *I* don't know. I'll probably die before that has to be answered. You folks, mostly, should be thinking about this so you can have a valid say in the answer. (IMAO NYC can sink unless it can clean up the mess politicians have made of the place and saving Fla, as much as I'd like to, is not really feasible.)
{^_^}
I live in the cheap part of town, north of PV.
A PE's take on this CF is a welcome change from "the news".
Casey, you have one of the most fascinating channels on TH-cam. Thanks for the dedication and hard work.
Thank you so much, I appreciate it!!
@@CaseyJones-Engineer I'll second that!
P. Geol here. Great presentation of the facts, and thanks for digging into lots of little details. I am not a hydrogeologist but I have managed and been accountable for the budget on lots of large and very complex environmental remediation projects. This has so many red flags. A massive groundwater extraction system within an active slide is a recipe for fiscal and performance disaster. Every connection will fail, every estimate of lifecycle before re-drilling will be off, and the cost each time will multiply. Working within neighbourhoods with already failing infrastructure and upset residents will be slow and costly. Then the slide will keep sliding and the residents will be hooped because the scale of the geological unit is just too much.
There is no happy answer here. I usually tend to blame residents building in the wrong place for coastal slide impacts, but this seems like an outlier. It was inevitable but the residents really had no reason to know.
I'm going to disagree, the residents absolutely knew about the slide since it started shifting in the 50s. The roads were always having issues & getting repaired. But since nothing too bad seemed to happen, the residents just stayed.
If the residents didn’t know about it, or the likelihood of a serious upheaval in the near future; the local and state governments should be held responsible. No one can predict the future, but clearly, the probability of a serious event, with only expensive remediation choices, was very likely.
They need to stop using taxpayers money to fix an unfixable situation. Everyone knows this area has been shifting since the 1960s. Just condemn the houses and face reality. Harsh but c'mon.
"building in the wrong place for coastal slide impacts [is an] outlier"
Come to WA state, you just described the entire north peninsula and major swaths of Seattle. Rich people LOVE building houses where they don't belong and selling them to suckers for "Muh View"
I have an easy answer, but nobody with a stake is going to like it.
The state declares a safety emergency and takes it all by eminent domain, paying only the impaired value since it's unlivable. Then waters the slope until it fully fails and becomes stable. Locates the spring or whatever is causing the slip, and caps it to supply the water system, or channels it to prevent further erosion. Grades and terraces the slope with retention walls, installs utilities in permanently stable ground, and sells off any buildable area to developers with strict covenants regarding destabilization.
Enough with the circus.
This has been going on for a very long time. Driving Portuguese Bend has always been a thrill ride. It's sad that all these people are without their homes, but local people have been watching this happen and waiting for the other shoe to drop. Shame about the Chapel. Always liked to go visit. Glad they are going to rebuild it.
This is such important information. I grew up in So Cal about 10-15 miles from Palos Verdes, and at UCLA in the '60s studied the geology of the state, What a revelation! Thanks to the many faults in the state, inumerable unstable locations have been built on to the max. Often the hills and cliffs are just too scenic to pass up, espcially if you are uninformed., or just venal. Closer to where I live now, the town of Pacifica (where the San Andreas fault goes out to sea) has lost quite few homes over the years to landslides. The affected lots have been tidied up so there is no sign of what happened. . I would not be surprised if in the future adjacent lots tumble. People never seem to learn.
After my mom left the PV area she went inland, and one had to cross the San Andreas fault on HWY 14. It cuts right over it and in the years immediately after I watched these small developments go up Right On the Faultline. I mean, really? ? ? It's nuts. And if you have just a little knowledge (for me one year of college geology) it is stunning that more people don't have any clue. this stuff should be taught in high school, basics anyway!
This is not due specifically to tectonic faults, but to sedimentary layers which include clay. With uplift, the clay layers tilt away from the slope. When the clay gets wet, it slips.
I'm amazed the city allowed houses to be built on top of a landslide (no matter the age) in the first place.
Could be someone had a vested interest in the project ...
$$$
California is a corrupt dystopia and there isn't a developer on the west coast that gives one shit about wetlands, watersheds and flood planes. They care about how fast the house will sell and for how much. Rich people only care about status and nothing shouts status like "ha ha I can build wherever the fuck I want"
City council and the planning department are the most crooked parasites on earth. They become city engineers because a government job is the best place for them to hide their incompetence.
Money talks safety walks.
The city lost in the courts
Before the development ever began, before the Crenshaw road improvement incident. That area in Palos Verdes was surveyed, and the civil engineers stated that there should not be any building on that land. Money changed hands, and the developers were given permission to build. The whole area is toast. It truly sucks. But, there’s no way that area can be saved. Palos Verdes in now the poster child for shady developers.
And…
Sea level rise will drown New Orleans within two decades. Visit before it’s gone, if you can. It’s a fabulous place, a birthplace of so much of great American Music, and it’s gonna drown.
We visited New Orleans in 2000 and had a great time. You can also add Florida to the list of areas that will be under water.
For those that do not know, from a 1989 study published in the Journal Science Direct:
The Portuguese Bend landslide, in coastal southern California, is an active, slow-moving mass of blocks and debris that extends from the shoreline to moderate altitudes along part of the southerly margin of the Palos Verdes Hills. These hills form a peninsula that is underlain by Cenozoic sedimentary and volcanic rocks draped anticlinally over a core of Mesozoic schist. In the southerly parts of the peninsula, inherently weak units in the Altamira Shale Member of the Miocene Monterey Formation dip seaward in general concordance with the ground surface. Ground failure has been widespread in this area. It evidently began in mid- to late-Pleistocene time, and it has continued intermittently to the present.
The Portuguese Bend landslide represents a reactivation of movement of the eastern part of a complex of prehistoric landslides occupying an area of approximately two square miles. This latest episode of movement began in 1956, presumably in response to placement of fill during a road construction project. The active slide subsequently was enlarged by sequential failure of adjoining blocks of ground, and by September 1969 about 54,500,000 metric tons of debris was slowly moving downslope in an area of approximately 104 ha. Movement has been continuous since recent failure began in 1956, although the velocity of the active slide decreased markedly after that year. Between 1962 and 1972 the velocity fluctuated only slightly about an average value of about 1 cm per day.
The active slide is an irregular prism, roughly triangular in plan view. The southern side of the triangle trends approximately 1100 m east-west along a stretch of shoreline that essentially coincides with the toe of the slide. The other two sides of the triangle trend northeast and northwest from the ends of the toe and meet about 1200 m north of the shoreline. The thickness of the moving mass differs considerably from one place to another, reflecting both topographic irregularities and major undulations in the underlying surface of movement. The maximum thickness is approximately 75 m.
Movement is occurring along a distinct basal failure surface. The eastern part of the slide is underlain by bedrock, and is bordered by bedrock with a general structure that limits further deep-seated propagation of failure to the east and northeast. In contrast, the western part of the slide is underlain and bordered by extensive ancient landslide deposits that are marginally stable. Further encroachment of the active slide westward and northwestward into these materials was viewed as a distinct possibility at the time the dissertation was prepared and has occurred since then.
Continued movement of the Portuguese Bend landslide since 1956 has been due to four main factors. A rise in the water table during the period 1957-1968 has been documented in the northwestern part of the moving mass and is attributable mainly to infiltration of surface runoff entering numerous open fissures that cut the surface of the slide. The toe of the active slide daylights along the shoreline and is subjected to storm-wave erosion, so that any natural build-up of resisting forces is prevented in this area. The redistribution of mass as the slide has moved along an undulatory failure surface has been responsible for local fluctuations in the driving and resisting forces. Finally, smoothing of irregularities in the failure surface by the moving slide mass must have decreased some of the forces resisting movement.
Great info! But the rate of slide has greatly accelerated, and we know now that there is a deeper source for the instability. Something like 160 feet down, rather than the 30 that had been the primary concern.
Of course that changes the cost and feasibility of potential solutions.
Plus we don't know what we don't know.
The risk of huge problems that can't be identified with current technology is ever present.
I would have tossed the hot potato to the next buyer a long time ago, especially since insurance won't cover any, or perhaps most, of any potential damage.
I've lived behind levees. Same risk analysis with different facts.
Where I grew up, it was tornadoes, floods and ice storms.
To quote Roseanne Roseannadanna, it's always something!
@@RockandRollWoman Yes, 75 meters = 250 feet. When researching I also found that gov't entities were taken to court by developers over the years after trying to halt development of the area. The developers won in court. And here we are!!
It was slow.
Thanks for the review of RPV landslide. This video was very informative.
I grew up in RPV (since 1974) but live currently in a nearby beach city to the north. My parents still live in RPV but north of the slide area.
The road that is located in the slide area is a main roadway to exit the Palos Verdes peninsula to the south and also the southern access to the Terranea resort (former Marineland site) and the Trump golf course. I used the road very often when I went to college and also to commuted to work.
A few comments:
The pipes you guessed were sewer are sewer force mains.
RPV is mostly Republican and shows up blue on the map because it is included with Los Angeles County on the map.
There was a long moratorium on building in the slide area for a long time but when the slide movement slowed down (during one of the many droughts) the city foolishly lifted the moratorium ( I am sure there was a lot of political pressure to do this from the property owners).
I have been told (need to fact check this) that RPV had to assume liability for the slide area as a concession to the LA county in order to incorporate as an independent city.
Growing up in RPV I noticed that the road through the slide area always cracks during wet winters and stays in good shape during droughts.
Also I have noticed that after wet winters artesian springs pop up in spots along the cliffs around April and seem to flow until the water pressure drops. My guess is that the wet winters and some of the water that gathers in the mountains of the LA basin percolate to the water table and as the watertable rises some of it flows to the ocean where is increases the water pressure.
And also as the ground moves i am sure the storm drain concrete segmental pipe sections crack or gaps form and water leaks out. I doubt the city has the money to inspect all of the storm drain pipes (some of which would be difficult to access or to remote camera).
There is another video (about ten years old if I remember correctly) on youtube by a former RPV councilman that discussed some of the history and previous failed attempts to slow or stop the slide.
Forgot to mention that although the slide area has always been moving, the current homes (sea view area) and Wayfarers Chapel that are located on the fringes of the slide area have been relatively stable in the past recent history. It appears they are being affected by the older, deeper slide whereas the main road was being affected by the newer shallower slide. I believe the deeper slide was only discovered during current explorations although the ancient scars can be seen from arial views. Very sad to see that Wayfarers Chapel had to be dismantled.
Thank you for your great comments. I think you have characterized the situation well with the groundwater. I think they were quite surprised to discover the much deeper slide plane at a depth of around 330 feet. There will be no quick or easy fix to this situation (if there is a fix to be had).
I lived in Torrance in the 80s. Portuguese Bend area of RPV has always been on the move. But it’s far far worse now. I’m following this story and I just feel terrible for these folks. They certainly can’t sell and many won’t be able to continue to live there. What a horrible situation. Personally, I would just cut bait and leave. But that’s me. So sad. I really can’t fathom how this can be remedied. I was so excited when I saw your post. I’m subscribed and watch all your posts. Thank you‼️
Thank you so much!
I would have tossed the hot potato to the next buyer years ago.
I live near the ocean, and I'm constantly evaluating the risks of earthquake or climate change damage to my property. I have earthquake insurance. When I lived behind a levee, I paid for flood insurance. Bottom line, the responsibility to protect my investment is mine, and mine alone.
If I couldn't insure a known significant risk, I'd move. But my neighbor, in her 80s with no children, doesn't have earthquake insurance. She decided that if her home is destroyed or significantly damaged, she'll move to senior housing. She also views it as 100 % her responsibility.
We must evaluate the risks we know, and make a conscious choice. If we don't, it's not the government's problem. Government money comes from other people's pockets. It's not free.
I use to live in the Los Angeles area, and use to scuba dive in that particular area, for years. That one section of PV (how the locals refer to Palos Verde) has been moving for decades. There actually are buildings on it. Many with "jack systems", to occasionally level them. Also, utility lines, such as the water mains, are not buried there, and just left on the side of the road.
Twenty year ago I visited friends in Rancho Palos Verdes and we drove to the beach. There was a sign on the road that said “roadway in continuous motion next xxx miles”. Above, you could see the hoses cantilevered out over the slope. The ground was made of ocean bottom- loose shells and dirt, scraped off the sea floor by the plate motion. This could not have been a surprise, except that it was too slow to see it coming.
The majority of the homes are inside that zone and everyone knows.
The slip zone has widened though, capturing more off to the southern end.
Theres a risk it will get much wider and affect rolling hills.
Thats why stabilization is important. Those in the zone are a full loss.
I was there in 2015 and on the Pacific Coast Highway (I think it was - it was the main coastal road) - it was rolling up & over finger like hummocks & you could see the continuous asphalt distortions & the above around utility pipes - which I though weird at the time but now I know it's the only way for them to not get ripped apart when the ground inevitably slips & dips.
@@psalm2forliberty577those gas pipes at that sharp hill in the back road have been above ground ever since I was a kid in the 60’s.
Yup when I have been in PV never have seen any solid rock there cept some spots, but most seems compressed rock and sand and now I have learned it all sits on top of volcanic ash…which melts during rain or rain/sprinkler water leaking into the ground
@@psalm2forliberty577 The road you’re referring to is Palos Verdes Drive South. Pacific Coast Hwy doesn’t go through Rancho Palos Verdes.
Well presented. Detailed and to the point. Good for people not familiar with the area; mapping made it clear. Thanx.
Glad you liked it!
Looking at the ground movement map, this area has moved more than 4 ft. since this time last year. Currently it is 1" per day. The layer of bentonite underlying this area has turned from a solid rock like layer before the rains of the last couple years to a soft wet clay, acting as a viscus slope.
Interesting. I know anything like clay does not dry very fast even close to the surface. Sounds like the skids are greased.
I have been following this closely. Thank you for such an informative video. My daughter/family lived in Portuguese Bend right at Palos Verdes Drive. The house was built mid 1950’s and my son n law put a lot of work, time, money into it rebuilding the foundation & walls. It was a beautiful home surrounded with lovely trees and gorgeous horse property. On a clear day you could see Catalina from the patio. Almost 300 days a year you didn’t need a heater or fans, the weather was just perfect. It was the place our families gravitated to for holidays. I was so sad when they sold & moved away but it was providence. There is a price you pay for living in such a lovely area.
They've been building expensive homes and buildings on shaky soil and landfill for decades out there. But Nature ALWAYS wins eventually...
Yup
My dad's old house on Crescent Ave in Palos Verdes dropped off into the sea a few years ago. His house was about 100 yards from the cliff in the '70's. So that's how much erosion has occurred in the last 50 years. It was a beautiful custom house. No one had built in those areas of Palos Verdes when I was living there in the '70's because of the landslide danger but greed led the planning dept to allow building. Sad for homeowners.
The Govt doesn't seem to understand spending good money on a lost cause is a waste. Time to cut their losses and get out of the area.
News flash: Brad Pitt is moving his star studded wrecking crew from New Orleans to PV. Get out your Gucci tool belts and smile for the cameras!
It’s not govt. that’s the problem. It’s clueless homeowners who look to the rest of us to pay for their mistakes.
@@Geoplanetjane I agree, both homeowners and Gov't that want to take care of every man's problems.
Thanks for your coverage on this. I live about 60 miles north, and the local news never goes into the technical information. Your coverage is outstanding, sufficient for a technically curious audience without delving too deep into theory and equations. Also interesting to note the mayor is a registered CE. I always wonder how our government would be if more politicians were engineers and scientists.
This is a great tape and has easy to understand! But honestly, we lived out there, next door to this area, in the 1980's and large areas had already slid down the hill before then. I cannot understand why development at anything other than at your own risk in that area is allowed. It was obvious then that the whole area should be condemned.
Corruption
The best technical summary presented on this subject. Kudos!
The actual slide reminds me of an old comedian George Carlin show titled 'saving the planet,' where he asks why people build a house next to an active volcano, then wonder why lava is running through the living room.
As with the Millennium Tower boondoggle, as one viewer noted, time to call in engineer Ron Hamburger to remedy the situation.
Thank you. I think they thought they could manage living on top of this landslide and now they are realizing that they can't.
@@CaseyJones-EngineerThank you for your response, Casey! I enjoy all your videos - explaining complicated engineering challenges in a logical and sensible matter-of-fact format.
Living on the eastern slope of the Palos Verdes peninsula, the soil under our neighborhood appears to be much more stable, and hopefully will not begin to move. The actual slide area is but a small portion of the entire peninsula, yet still a tragedy for those living on that moving piece of land, which has been occurring over many decades.
@@michaelmeichtry316 Thank you. I will continue to follow this story and will do update videos.
Last year, I found Whats going on with shipping due to the tragic Titan implosion. I found this channel due to the tragic Dali crash. You make good videos.
I grew up in Rolling Hills on Chuckwagon Road in 1957. It was known about the land slides back then. Geologists and contractors warned people not to build in certain areas. What a terrible shame / tragedy people are losing their homes. Very sad.
State officials aren't visiting because that would give the impression the state is going to foot the bill for saving hundreds of multi-million dollar mansions. I can't think of worse optics for a politician.
Yes, there is that aspect too I suppose.
The mayor and county supervisor are ever present, the latter promising governmental help - but it would have to be paid for by the State or the Feds. The amount required to save fewer than 200 homes is going to be astonishing.
I've lived behind levees. I once had a cat who fell into the slurry mix in a trench when Sacramento was building a 60 foot deep, 3 foot wide slurry wall to keep water from undermining the earthen levees. Fortunately he came into bed coated with the mud and cement slurry mix, and I was able to bathe him before he could groom himself and wind up with hardened intestines.
Where I grew up, it was tornadoes, floods and ice storms.
To quote Roseanne Roseannadanna, it's always something!
LA County will still send them all their property tax bills :P. With any luck you're far enough away from the survey marker(s) they referenced and now "your property" has no improvements you have to pay taxes on.
Yeah. Newsom's hesitation is understandable.
Newsom just declared the are a "disaster area". Let the tax dollars flow to bail out those who built on a landslide.
The modern massive movement of the Palos Verdes landslide first started back in the mid 1950s when Crenshaw Blvd was extended to the south. I recall watching TV when I was six years old and it was “big news” at that time.
When purchasing my Northern California home, the loan company required a "hazards study". Had the house been located on a slide, I would have been required to add a rider to the insurance policy. This is just COMMON SENSE which seems to be in shout supply these days.
Common sense is not very common.
I've lived in southern California for 30 years and this has always been a problem. For years, the road across the slide would have to be repaved/restriped every month or two. After the last dewatering effort was completed, it seemed to get get better. I guess it's hard to stop mother nature
I graduated from Palos Verdes high school in 1963 we'd drive pass Portuguese Bend to school and several times had to turn around and go the long way around through Rolling Hills to get to school because overnight the road dropped over a foot.
Great Job, Casey. No, your homeowner's insurance does not cover this. The Portugese Bend area in Palos Verdes reminds me of Bluebird Canyon in Laguna Beach and La Conchita, further north on 101, where things are moving all the time. Some places are not good spots for development. The government cannot stop the land from moving by passing a law. Most non-engineers, sadly, do not get this.
I wonder if many don’t have the coverage needed because it’s too expensive?
@@chriswomack922I *believe* some properties in there have been excluded from the option of even purchasing a rider due to the assumed risk involved.
I grew up over 100 miles south of there in La Jolla, CA. There was a landslide along the east side of Soledad Mountain Road in 2007. In 1984, I worked on two new construction homes built a few hundred feet south of where the slide would be. I was working with my father at the time, he recalled a landslide in that area that destroyed several homes under construction. We asked the superintendent on the job if they were aware of the past landslides, he said they were and that there were concrete caissons "down to bedrock". I later learned that this area was old undersea floor that was an ancient uplift. The city denied any responsibility for the slide due to leaking water mains, they did remediation and today there are homes on this site once again.
Peak internet benefit.
Thank you so much for giving background to a story that is tragic and interesting. The fact that there is such latitude for potential solutions only heightens the need for information that can enlighten the public. Maybe we are going to need a department of differential cost benefit analysis.
Thank you for checking it out. This situation is a disaster for those people living there as you say. I think there should be a little more empathy from some people for these people that are impacted. After all, there is something risky about just about every place somebody lives (tornados, earthquakes, landslide, volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, etc.).
Everyone in Rancho Palos Verdes knows that it's a landslide area. The government cannot stop major landslides. Some people must move and let the earth do what it does.
Exactly right!!!
I drove through RPV from late 90’s to the early teens and the bend was always fun to drive over. It was a cal trans roller coaster.
Thank you for covering this issue. Palos Verdes was one of my mother's favorite areas of California. It's so sad to see this happening. But I agree with you, it's not a sustainable situation. Please continue coverage of this area.
Hire Ron Hamburger, The King Of Underpinning. He can underpin the entire coast of Southern California, with just 8 pilings. I'm sure he'll set things straight!
🤣🤣
I think the Millenium Tower is wobbling from all of us in San Francisco giggling right now. I feel for wanting to live near paradise, I just have no feelings for people who want to live near paradise on the cheap, and in this case FULL KNOWLEDGE of where they lived. As in, California has the most strict disclosure laws in the country. Any government official should stay a long legal distance away from this mess.
Outstanding comment. Unfortunately the government political guru's keep putting on a show for the constituents that got them elected in the first place. " Hey John and Jane Doe candidates, I've got a check for your upcoming campaign for 10k. Our neighborhood needs a little work?" SSDD. Yeah, the Hamburger Engineering Group. 🍔 Extra pickles please.
@@toddwheeler1526 Make sure they are Boar's Head pickles. Just sayin'.
@@katsiduzynski488 This is a Vlasic house!
Thank you, great update, and summary of a complicated multi-layered situation. We lived and grew up on the Hill (learned to swim in the PBC clubhouse pool) and married at Wayfarers, now retired and looking to move back to PV, and wonder where it is safe. I assume north of Hawthorne could be better than south of Hawthrone!
In California, there are many places that were initially very attractive as home/mansion locations and then became very dangerous to live in. Most known are homes build right on ocean cliffs. Every few years you see the news showing entire properties sliding towards the ocean. Many of those cliffs and some other elevated locations were approved for limited development only to be later overdeveloped, in the 90-ties and early 2000s. The best example is the 2005 Bluebird Canyon Slide in Laguna Beach, CA. Somewhere in the late sixties, early seventies, a geologist approved some additional development, bur stated that the very top of the hill could not be built on, because that would induce shifting of the soil. In early 2000s, two additional houses had been erected, one exactly on the top of the hill. The owner of that property was a very powerful political figure and simply could not have been refused anything. The construction involved removal of large quantities of soil and putting 55 hundred square foot house. In June of 2005, a water main cracked near the top of the hill, saturated the soil and caused the landslide. However, in order to secure federal funding, the city blamed the disaster on prior winter's profuse precipitation.
Amazing report. I grew up in the area and walked and drove a jeep all over Portuguese Bend. I always heard debris from expanding Crenshaw triggered the slide, but this is the first time I heard the cut severed the toe of the slide. I always thought it odd the debris could cause the slide because most of the debris was pushed off the downhill side of the cut at the top of the ridge. The remaining debris was used as fill across some canyons but never enough I always thought to trigger the slide.
You sure picked a secure profession. No shortage of work. Other people's instability ensures your stability.
The news and the people living over there need to hear this video in its entirety. You have explained it in a more concise way more than the media. I feel for these people but they knew about this since when you said. That area is going to end up like the sunken city in San Pedro unfortunately.
Thank you so much! They definitely have their work cut out for them. If the have another wet year there won't be any way to arrest the sliding.
@@CaseyJones-EngineerI’m not very confident they will be successful arresting as it stands right now.
Casey- also in the past decades there have been many high ranking officials who were totally against development of this area but the house developers got their way. I think the solution of this problem will greatly exceed the value of the homes especially since there is already extensive damage to many many homes. I think unlimited money will not solve this problem.
Can’t the developers be sued by the homeowners if they prove that developers knew this was a possibility?
@@VintageLPs These neighborhoods date back to the 1950s.
@@hippiebits2071 But not all the houses do, many are newer, at least it looks that way in the Seaview area, I don't even remember that being there in the 70's though I do remember further south developments.
I went with a geology class in the 70's. Potuguese Bend was a notable place of interest. As we wound up our bus field trip, the professor quizzed us on what steps should be taken to try to address some of the challenges. He also quizzed us on what should not be done.
Definitely additional watering of greenbelts shouls be avoided. As we turned a bend in the road overlooking a cliff we saw newr builds and lots of sprinklers watering the folliage. Would love to know who signef off on that.
Oh good! I wanted to ask you your opinion of this. News media are hopeless so far as giving factual information! Thanks! :-)
My thoughts exactly..
Thank you so much for speaking about this. I live in Rancho Palos Verdes and just came home from the city council meeting and feel very let down by the surface details provided. I live well above the evacuation area. My neighborhood is at the top of that hill where Crenshaw ends. I grew up here and came back to look after my elderly Mom. I appreciate the details you are providing about what is actually happening. I wonder if you could speak to worse case sc
enario? I question the integrity of the whole hillside. Is that something to be worried about? Also, there is an empty damn/resevior at the corner of PV drive North and PV drive West. Could rain water be diverted to that?
BTW, I completely agree that dumping money into this is like pouring water in a bucket with a hole at the bottom. Houses should never have been built there.
There is really no way this guy could responsibly answer your questions with any certainty unfortunately. Even those working the project are faced with many unknowns. My heart goes out to everyone living in there. It’s a beautiful area and I can completely understand those wanting to stay if at all possible.
My client owns Smith Emery, a testing and engineering firm on the west coast and has a house in this area, his is in the Flying Triangle. He has a lot of knowledge to the cause of the slide going on back to the 50s.
A lot of the houses in his area are sitting on steel frames with cribbing underneath that can be adjusted as the land movers. When the doors start to stick it’s time to level it out again.
@@butterflywoodworks2374 Should've decided on pontoon-style mega houses instead. Just inflate the sinking side until the next movement. Eventually, they'll would've had a houseboat on the Pacific. Too bad
Malibu had a landslide in the Sweetwater Mesa area. Everyone on the hill sued everybody and anybody. The land all along the Pacific coast is mostly unstable and overbuilt. Topanga Canyon had a mudslide this winter that shut down the highway for a few weeks. The mountains are steep and when the rain hits hard it makes for a bad combination.
Cool! I had to pick a direction in science, but I wanted to learn them all. Now that I'm retired, I can watch guys like you tell me about a day at your job. I love it. I wish I could have lived 100 lives to learn everyones job im detail.
Some friends of mine lived in Rolling Hills on the other side of the hill overlooking the port, and had a smaller landslide in their backyard that just barely missed the house. They've since sold it and moved.
Now that was smart‼️ They didn’t wait till the situation prevented them from selling. So happy for them.
The slide earlier this year may have been related to "backyards" consisting of compacted fill, possibly unrelated to the ancient slide . . .
@@PeggiMendricks But, eventually some poor schlub(s) were left holding the bag. Sigh, oh well . . .
I lived in Rolling Hills Estates on the top of the Palis Verdes Peninsula from 1958 to 1965. The whole peninsula is an orphan piece of the Pacific tectonic plate the forms an escarpment rising independently from the Catalina Channel. It is formed from sedimentary rock with forty to fifty feet of top cover soil. Between the overlayment and the base rock is a layer of dry, powdery clay anywhere from two to ten feet thick. As an escarpment, the base sedimentary rock has been pushed up into slanted layers. That means that if the overpayment is opened, water can enter the subsoil underground and run, unseen, down hill. As long as the overpayment remains intact, everything is stable. 14:56
However, as you correctly noted, several main streets running south from LA were cut through the overlayment. As an escarpment, the sides of rise, called Mt. San Pedro, are very steep. In order to reach the top without switchbacks, the builders cut the roadway into the side and top of the hill, opening the subsoil clay to the elements. Then, in the early 1960’s, the overpayment soils on the opposite (south) side of the hill began to slide. That is the Portuguese Bend area.
Even while we lived on the north side of the hill, overlooking scenic Torrance, CA, I kept hearing that PV would become more and more expensive for existing homes because the whole western and southern facing sides of the hill were unsafe for any future building. I guess greed is more powerful than common sense.
I was probably 10 years old when I saw a landslide in San Diego Ca in La Jolla ,5 houses were rolling down on a hill,sixty years later that area was fully build and another landslide was bringing down 3 other houses in the same hill,city gov new the problem and still permitted new construction there ,with banks and builders everything is all about the money,they don’t care about geological problems ,especially in such an expensive area,they will build,and build !
These owners have not been able to expand their homes etc for a while. Even those in surrounding area have significant building and reoair restrictions
I feel like the same exact stories are frequently told about Newport and San Clemente! I
What year was that? I was on the Subdivision (technical) Advisory Committee in the seventies . . .
I know this goes against most people’s expectations, but if homes are condemned is that area , wouldn’t it be safer to ban any structures or roads from being built in the future.
"Adela", and there's the same EXACT mentality, about SoCal's wildfire burns. When the conflagrations strike, more people go to pieces, than become heroes; the former will inevitably interfere against the heroes.
Great insight an very informative!! Thank you!!
Glad you enjoyed it!
I'm surprised the homes in the affected area haven't been condemned yet by the landslide.
Condemned? Heck, realtors are on TH-cam featuring some of these homes showing all the cracked ceilings, buckled floors, wonky brickwork and hoping by lowering the price from $3M to $2,000,000, someone will buy! One huge house actually went into escrow for $1.45M the other day but then it fell through. (No pun intended.) It is right on the corner where the biggest holes have opened. I feel terribly sorry for people who have lived there their whole lives and are losing a tremendous amount of equity. I also do not think the American taxpayers should have to cover the bill.
@@VintageLPsYou do realize that the people who live there pay taxes as well right?
@@hippiebits2071 Yes, but they are paying property taxes to their county just as I pay property taxes for my house to my county. If an earthquake destroys my house I have paid a lot extra for 43 years to cover my house in the event of an earthquake. I wouldn’t expect other people to cover my loss. I actually think the residents of Palos Verde, if they can prove that they did not know they were buying a home in a slide area, should be able to sue the original builders, seller or realtor if there is no clause in their contract proving they were made aware of the situation.
Outstanding presentation as always
Great explanation of complex topics. All aspects are addressed without promoting a specific position. Logical conclusions can be drawn from your presentation of facts. Thank you for this and other videos that tell it like it is and allows thise impacted to take appropriate action.
Thank you very much, I appreciate it!!
"Great explanation of complex topics. All aspects are addressed without promoting a specific position. " In other words, Money talks and bullshits walks!"
As Steely Dan said in their hit song "My Old School": "California...tumbles into the sea."
I love Steely Dan. Would you believe Aja was the first album I ever bought.
And Tom Petty: "California's been good to me. 'Hope it don't drop into the sea".
@@barryf5479 God is in control, not people. He protects His own. It
Very well presented Casey - from a retired Professional Engineer
Thank you!
Reminds me of Brienz-Brinzauls here in the south-east of Switzerland thats been sliding for decades. And the discussion around „How much is too much?“ got even more intense when part of the mountain above this pretty little village came crashing down, stopping just a few dozen meters before hitting the houses. It‘s definitely not easy to balance the different interests! Thx for the time and effort you put into these well balanced videos 👍!
Thank you. Yes, it is seldom the case that a cost/benefit analysis is done in these situations. People expect their political leaders to take action in these situations even if the efforts prove to be futile.
I recall a case decades ago where people built homes on the Atlantic side of Long Island NY. Developers told buyers that breakwaters would be built in the future. No breakwaters were ever planned. A comment offered was ‘Don’t build your house in the teeth of the North Atlantic!’ I.e. use common sense.
I am not an engineer, but shouldn’t common sense dictate that you do not build where there is evidence that the development is on loose earth.
I live in Mass. and follow your videos on the bridge in RI. It’s a mess. Little Rhody and Providence are notorious for mob corruption. A local station did a story which followed repairs on the bridge going back to the 70’s. Lots of money spent for no results, past is prelude.
You do a great service by presenting factual and researched videos.
The picture used in the post is where I grew up. The old 1956 slide aleays stopped at the canyon to the west called Klondike canyon. Now the slide has penetrated big time into the Sea :View housing tract at Dauntless Ave. Tragic. The old Vanderlip estate area at Abalone Cove is now on roller skates. Nobody will be able to sell a home at anywhere near matket value in these areas even if your street is stable.
I have a cousin who owns a home in this area. His house is not affected, yet... He tells me that police cars are parked on the street leading to the blackout areas and proof of residency is required to enter. The power company is laying out new power lines and installing new transformers, most of the houses will be reconnected over the next 3 weeks. 20-30 homes are directly involved in the current slide and the owners of these homes have been told that power cannot be restored, and they are living there under threat of an emergency evacuation.
Cops are acting as guards for rich neighborhoods and illegally preventing people from freedom of movement in public spaces? Oh, wait, it's California they don't give a shit about the constitution or civil rights.
Do you mind if I ask you some sincere questions?
Why did your cousin decide to buy in that area. I live in Texas, and any condition/situation affecting the stability and safety of the property would have to be disclosed prior to sale. I assume it’s the same in CA, and he would’ve been aware of landslide potential.
Is he able to get homeowners insurance?
Is he considering selling? Is his home sellable?
Homes are currently selling in this area. Does he know who’s buying?
Has his property value changed?
Sorry for so many questions, but I would like to hear about the situation from the perspective of a resident. Thank you in advance if you are able to respond.
This has been moving for years. In the 1980's I knew people in the Portuguese Bend area how were dealing with their land sliding down the hill. They were constantly jacking up their home and putting cinder blocks under their house to keep it as level as possible. It was a cycle that was recurring almost daily. They eventually lost their home. I remember driving out to their place and the road was repaved nearly daily, along with the water and sewer lines that, at this point, were all above ground level and could be seen on the side of the road as you drove north toward where Marineland (at this time was) was. It was so sad. They lost everything and they weren't covered by insurance. A few years (maybe a decade) ago some land owners sued the city to allow them to build on their land in the slide area AND THEY WON!! How crazy its that?!?! I feel sorry for those poor souls that bought and built in the slide area, but if you don't do your due diligence then who's fault is ii really?
I remember going up in the sky view tower at Marineland and seeing the landslide scar in the hillside above the Palos Verdes foothills. It was so easy to see that the whole area was unstable.
Excellent presentation . Thanks for going to college so I didn't have to.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Excellent video and graphics. In particular the zooming of the map shows the area in context. The big red arrow made it dirt simple (can I say that?) to figure out what you are referring to. Keep up the good work! :)
Thanks for that!
It’s almost like they’re just sitting on their hands waiting for the infrastructure to fall apart or slide away. Smh
I’m kinda glad the mayor is frustrated.
They’ll likely keep it sustainable until they stop getting buyers….
Again, fantastic presentation of facts.
Thank you Casey 🙏
Instead of spending all of that money to shore up the homes, wouldn't it be wiser to give the money to those 20 to 30 homeowners to move...!!!
NOTHING will keep the land from sliding....
There is nothing greater than nature. Our geology instructor took us there for a field trip. It was interesting to say the least.
If you analyze party registration at a finer grain, you will see that the Palos Verdes Peninsula is indeed a part of Los Angeles County with a Republican majority.
I represented parts of the Palos Verdes Peninsula in the California Legislature from 1992 - 2006, though never as far south as Rancho Palos Verdes.
City Council races are nonpartisan, on the surface only. RPV and most of the small cities on the peninsula have all or almost all Republican council members.
Nice analysis. Best I've found on TH-cam.
Who cares whether they were Republicans or Democrats.
The entire coastal area of California are Democrats and they've screwed up all of the coastal regions. LOOK IT UP...!!
Thank you for bringing that up, and I'm also glad he put that in there, but yes, unclear.
When he put up that map and it showed blue….I was shaking my head no…..these are manly rich people and the majority will be republicans, glad you posted same.
Lots of Dem donors scattered about, though.
What does political affiliation have to do with any of this?
Thanks for your analysis. I've been looking for this type of geological analysis for some time. Most articles are overviews only.
Glad it was helpful!
"The toe was cut, causing movement over time". I was wondering if you could talk about a "toe cut" in more detail in a future vid. Thanks for the vid
I second that motion. I read about it years ago , but I think it basically introduces a shear plane and allows H2O ground penetration.
Landslides come to a point when they stop sliding. This point is called the "toe", the slide is shaped kinda like a foot. When a slide stops, it is backed up on the toe. If you take a bulldozer and cut the toe off, slides will frequently start moving again. There are several toes in several slide areas in this event, the biggest toe is offshore a few hundred yards... The waves come in and break up the toe, wash the material out, and the slide keeps moving to refill the washed out material.
Watch the TH-cam video titled "Model landslides with toe removal and reactivation"
@@rtqii But wasn't the construction happening higher up the hill on Crenshaw blvd when this happened? I don't know what you would call it, the "ankle"?
@@hochhaul Thanks ....I just watched it and it shows the cause and effect erfectly!
Thanks for the technical explanation. I saw the news but didn't understand the details until now.
Thank you!
Excellent summary. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Great example of the "sunk cost" concept ... stop the bleeding of $$$$ and energy and move on. I've lived within a couple miles of this area my entire live, it's always been moving. Very informative video, thank you.
Thank you. I think they are in the mode of spending money and having short-term stabilization but this deeper and greater slide (reactivation of the ancient slide) is far different and is unlikely to be effectively remediated.
I took a geology class field trip to this area in the 1980’s. It was already bad then. Some houses were cracked severely or collapsed, and the water and sewer lines were already in the pipes you see above ground. There were some houses that had fallen off of the edge of an inland canyon as well. In this case there was a steep angle to the sedimentary layers. The weight of the houses was too much so they slipped off the edge of the side of the small canyon where the sedimentary layers were angled downward on the edge of the canyon. I was surprised to see a lot of new looking houses then. With the record historic amounts of rainfall we received last winter, I sure it accelerated the slides in this area.
This whole area should have been made a city park decades ago as the soil and geologic features in the area cannot support the weight of all those houses.
Very informative. Thank you !!
You are welcome!
Thought of you when I read about the landslides in Palos Verde. Terrible situation for the homeowners (and the city government). But who/how were all these developments approved when there was evidence of ancient and contemporary land movement? The trail of development approval would be a good subject for an investigative journalist. And, finally, how common are these ancient landslide areas in southern California?
California, aka "paradise" is a massive revamp of mother nature. Witness the Central Valley Project where twenty-two massive dams where built in the Sierra Nevada foothills in the 1950s and 1960s to prevent the melting of the winter snow pack from turning the Central Valley into a lake. Not only are there these massive dams but hundreds of miles of levies along the Sacramento, American, Merced, Feather, and other rivers to keep them from overflowing and flooding metropolitan areas such as Sacramento, Stockton, Yuba/Marysville. I lived in a house built in 1923 it like other houses built before Folsom Dam, Oroville, and Shasta Dam were built in the 1950s had flood basements. Every winter and spring Sacramento would flood, but damage was limited as the basement was built ABOVE ground level would flood and not the living area above and assessable by walking up several steps. The flood basement was where a boat was stored to be used as transportation. Old Sacramento at the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers was built on top of twenty-two feet of catacombs which flooded.
Old Town Sacramento proves your point.
Great overview of a complex issue!
Thank you!