A landslide brings it down

For 49 years, the Twidwell family enjoyed an idyllic life in the Portuguese Bend area of ​​the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The marine layer that engulfed the rest of the peninsula stayed away from their neighborhood, so the weather was always sunny. Shari Twidwell’s two best friends were also her neighbors: they rode bikes in their front yards and rode in and out of their homes with three sets of parents.

However, over the past two years, above-average rainfall has led to unprecedented land movement, damaging neighborhoods and relationships that have spanned decades.

Since October last year, the movement of a landslide complex in Portuguese Bend has been dramatic. Twidwell said when they first moved into the area 51 years ago, the ground in the area was shifting at a rate of 2 millimeters a year. City officials say it is moving 1 foot a week in some places, slowly destroying homes, roads and other infrastructure.

“The subsidence that is now catastrophic is something completely new,” Twidwell said. “So it was eight months of out-of-this-world sliding activity. Total bananas.”

Traffic is so bad that the historic Wanderers’ Chapel had to be dismantled and moved. Some driveways are now 6 to 3 feet away from the homes they once connected to. The media columns are leaning ominously. Electricity and gas were disconnected in over 200 houses for an indefinite period. Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency.

Critical point

KC King’s family bought the house next door to Twidwell’s 30 days after her birth in 1974. She said growing up in Palos Verdes was “special and magical.” But the magic turned into a slow disaster.

Last year the yard “picked up” and started “rolling”. She said you had to go through the yard to get to the back of the house.

When they cut off the gas, my mother wanted to stay. But then power outages occurred, prompting King to move the couple to Davis, where they now live.

“I think it’s all like, oh, it’s a lot to take in, especially being uprooted from where you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life,” King said.

Looking at alternatives

For Twidwell, the earth’s movement caused minimal damage to the house where she grew up. But she said it’s not just about her family.

“Every time someone says, ‘You know what, I give up. I give up. I’m done. I can’t do this anymore, it’s a loss for all of us,” she said. “It’s not just about them losing their home or the place where they wanted to spend the rest of their lives. But it is what it is, we all lose. We are losing a member of our family.”

Twidwell lives with his parents. She added that her 88-year-old father suffers from advanced Parkinson’s disease, macular degeneration and is blind. Her mother, a nurse, cares for her father full-time, and Twidwell is his substitute caregiver. Twidwell herself has multiple sclerosis. Their house was rebuilt 20 years ago on the condition that “everything would be flat and everything, including the counters, would be accessible if someone was in a wheelchair,” she said.

Now power outages have forced her to temporarily move her parents to a hotel.

Twidwell stated that as a therapist she cannot emphasize the community aspect enough, adding, “My parents are in as good shape as they are because they have a community.”

She was looking for batteries for previously installed solar panels. They won’t power the entire house, but she said they’ll be enough for one or two rooms, a fridge and Wi-Fi.

“We’re kind of taking a gradual approach because we’re kind of waiting for the next shoe to come out,” Twidwell said. “How else are they going to limit us or our ability to live here, right?”

She said if the temporary plan works, she would consider adding more solar panels and purchasing a backup generator for cloudy days. But he knows it won’t last forever. Her family plans to remodel their Torrance home to make it ADA accessible “because we’re pretty sure something else terrible is going to happen here when it starts raining.”

Can land traffic be slowed down?

City officials said that while they can’t completely stop land traffic, they hope to slow it down. In June, crews began drilling holes in the ground to see where the water was concentrated so they could install hydraulics to dry the soil. However, when they drilled holes, it turned out that they were dealing with a deeper and much larger landslide.

City officials say they are moving away from the plumbing project and prioritizing deep drainage wells.

Meanwhile, residents can only watch as their community continues to fall apart.

“If a tornado comes and wipes out your town, it will take five minutes. If a hurricane comes, it will take maybe five days. If there’s an earthquake, it’s instantaneous and there’s no end to what we can put our finger on,” King said. “I don’t know when it will end, it’s a ridiculous thing that will never end, but it kind of feels like it,” he added.