La Jolla landslide

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Trooper_IHB

Trooper_IHB

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<p>Does anyone know what caused that landslide yet? Can you imagine if that was your street ?</p>

<p>I can't find a link to post yet. I believe the news said it's on Soledad Canyon Road.</p>
 
<p>No, seriously it was gravity:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/10/04/lajolla.landslide/index.html">http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/10/04/lajolla.landslide/index.html</a></p>
 
<p>It is funny, but it is true. If you build a home on a slope, eventually it will slide. <strong>It will slide.</strong> There are no ifs, ands, or buts. It is just a matter of time. Maybe longer than your lifetime or your offspring's lifetime, but at some time, it will slide.</p>

<p>I can not tell you how many slopes I have monitered in my career. And the even funnier part is that the homeowners usually win their lawsuits against the city for issuing the permits to build on the slope location. And guess who ends up paying? You and I. You and I pay for somone else's house because they bought a home on a slope.</p>

<p>I am fine with folks buying and building on slopes, but doesn't it seem to be a bit ludicrous that the taxpayers end up paying for those decisions? You want a nice view? Fine. Cool. But, why do I have to pay for it? </p>

<p>How much you want to bet that those <strong>poor</strong> folks in La Jolla will sue the city for issuing the permits some many decades ago, and the homeowners will win?</p>
 
<p>cayci, thanks for the link<em>....."Gravity pulling on the incline is pulling down masses of earth and those masses of earth have houses on top of them," Abbott told the paper. "It's a geologically bad site and should not have been built on to begin with."</em> </p>

<p>What a comp killing statement !</p>
 
My father is a geologist. He helped me with an Earth Sciences project in college on landslides. There is actually a certain type of soil that, when wet, makes a landslide inevitable. He affectionately calls that soil type "baby poop." Everything above that slippery soil is going to come down. He said that the problem is sometimes caused by folks higher up on the hill watering their lawns coupled with destabilized soil below due to development...the water seeps down and can cause the landslide.
 
These slopes are supposed to be engineered to be less than the maximum <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_repose">angle of repose</a>. The cause of many landslides is the saturation of these soils which creates added weight and less friction. Modern engineered slopes should hold up better, but there will always be unusual circumstances like a major earthquake after soils become saturated, etc. that will cause these slopes to fail.
 
I saw something this morning where a resident mentioned that they had taken the watermains and put them above ground in recent weeks because they kept failing. And another offical saying that the soil condition in the affected area would not be built upon under todays building codes. Some expensive La Jolla property is going to turn into vapor. So sad for the owners affected. Just a total loss of equity and I dont think most Insurance covers this kind of loss.
 
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