In a coastal Southern California community where multimillion-dollar villas teeter over the Pacific Ocean, power remained down to nearly 140 homes Monday. Deepening landslides prompted evacuation warnings and a gas supply shutoff. Southern California Edison said it turned off electricity to residences in a part of Rancho Palos Verdes, roughly 25 miles south of Los Angeles, on Sunday afternoon due to safety concerns, forcing some of the city’s 42,000 residents to find alternate accommodation. “The land movement in the Portuguese Bend community has created such a dangerous situation that we have made the very difficult decision to disconnect power indefinitely to prevent that equipment from igniting wildfire,” said Larry Chung, Southern California Edison’s vice president of customer engagement, during a news conference.
A power line fell in the Portuguese Bend area last week, causing a small fire.The power outage prompted city officials to notify residents in affected regions to initiate evacuation arrangements; an emergency assistance center was established to aid with smartphone charging, relocation, and mental health care.”This is an ever-changing crisis as we navigate it, and we must be prepared,” Rancho Palos Verdes City Manager Ara Mihranian said at a news conference on Sunday. “That is the only way we can stay safe.”As of Monday morning, evacuations were not required, but municipal officials advised impacted homeowners who stay in their houses to “limit their use of water and plumbing, especially overnight when generators may be turned off for periods.”
The terrain of Rancho Palos Verdes, which sits atop the bluffs of the Palos Verdes Peninsula and is home to luxury real estate, including the Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles, has shifted since the 1950s. However, geologists say it is advancing more than a foot per week in some regions, endangering specific neighborhoods.
Scientists began investigating the area after the gas supply was turned off near Portuguese Bend last month due to a “significant new land movement” that was putting a “strain” on infrastructure. City Public Works Director Ramzi Awwad stated at a recent council meeting that the land movement was “new and unprecedented.”
Over the last two years, an increase in severe rainfall has compounded the problem along California’s coast, with water soaking the slopes. Climate change is also increasing the pace of rainfall across the country. In Rancho Palos Verdes, the famous Wayfarers Chapel, a Frank Lloyd Wright Jr.-designed national historic site that has overlooked the ocean since 1951, has been temporarily shuttered since February due to rainfall hastening soil displacement.
