Homeowners Find Flaws in Settlement for Landslide

Two friends already had called Ethel Dow by noon Saturday to ask on which paradise island she planned to spend her share of the settlement for the 1983 landslide that left her home “virtually worthless.”

As she baked a blueberry pie in her San Clemente kitchen and recalled the question--”Now that you’re rich and famous, where are you going?”--she had to laugh wistfully.

For despite the announcement Friday that negotiators for the City of San Clemente had agreed to pay a total of $5 million to Ethel and Edwin Dow and 85 others whose homes were lost or damaged in the spectacular landslide, Dow said she and her neighbors probably won’t be able to move.

“Our home is virtually worthless right now,” Dow said. “We finally found someone who would give us a policy after our mortgage insurance was canceled, but it’s almost impossible to get a new mortgage. And who’s gonna buy a house on this street when the end of it just drops off like it fell off the face of the earth?”

Just after sundown on Dec. 30, 1983, the two houses at the curve end of her cul-de-sac slid off Via Catalina down the side of Verde Canyon. A third home, at the edge of Via La Jolla just up the slope from the Dows, was carried down the same canyon wall with an 83-year-old grandmother inside. She survived but the house was destroyed.

There were no serious injuries, but property damage in the ocean-view neighborhood, where homes were valued at from $200,000 to $500,000, was considerable. In addition to the three homes that slid into the canyon, seven others sit empty today, condemned by the city and abandoned by the owners.

Friday’s announcement of a settlement marked the end of a rancorous 3 1/2-year volley of lawsuits and countersuits between homeowners, insurance companies and the city. Less than a half-dozen other homeowners who are represented by separate attorneys have lawsuits or settlements still pending, said Brian Day, who will receive part of the settlement.

While the agreement reached before Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert A. Knox is contingent upon approval of the homeowners and the San Clemente City Council, that is considered “more or less a rubber stamp,” said Patrick E. Catalano, the San Francisco attorney who negotiated the settlement for the homeowners.

The deal will provide between $50,000 and $300,000 for all but two of the 47 homes involved in the slide, which homeowners say was caused by a leaking city water main. The money is in addition to an estimated $3 million in insurance already collected by homeowners, Catalano said Friday.

On Saturday, Day and the Dows and a few other residents talked about the settlement, but they were far from ebullient. They were relieved but tired of fighting for a settlement. And they are still unsatisfied, they said, by one legacy of the landslide that the settlement did not provide for: the repair of their streets, two of which stop abruptly at a ragged, curbless brink, separated by a chain-link fence from a sheer drop to the canyon floor. The streets end right where the houses fell off.

“That’s probably our biggest concern now,” said Ethel Dow, who had to contend with cracks in her driveway and patio and separated walls. “How long do we have to live like this? Four years is enough.”

Windows in the seven condemned homes have been broken, and intruders have left a trail of whiskey bottles. Large cobwebs decorate evergreen bushes; weeds sprout three feet high from cracked driveways and dead pine needles form a front lawn. The last home on Via Catalina, abandoned since residents were evacuated minutes after the house next door slid away, is empty except for Christmas lights and garlands.

On Via La Mesa, Gail and Phil Carnahan rent their corner home. It is the only one of six on the short street that isn’t vacant. She said Saturday that the couple enjoy having the street to themselves and would like to buy the home they rent, but they haven’t been able to find a bank that will give them a mortgage.

Added Day: “Right now, our feeling with the settlement is . . . that the city should look into cosmeticly fixing the streets and do something with the abandoned houses.”

The $5 million will be divided among the homeowners according to the value of their homes and the damage. None of those interviewed Saturday would say what their damages totaled or their share of the settlement.

Minus about 33% in attorney fees, the individual settlement sums may cover the price of repairing cracked patios, fractured walls and split foundations, residents said. But it won’t recoup the full value of their homes, which they say are unsalable.

“If you came as a prospective buyer to my house and looked down the street and saw vacant houses and overgrown weeds coming out of the broken asphalt in the street, and then it just drops off into a canyon, would you want to buy here?,” Day asked.

Added Ethel Dow: “You would probably want a curb at the end of the street, eh?”