Housing: Don't Water the Daisies!

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"We floated 30 feet south," marveled Los Angeles Industrialist Thomas Donohue, "then 20 feet east, and finally 10 feet straight down." He was talking about his house.

From a vantage point with a view atop suburban Pacific Palisades, Donohue's $100,000 Spanish-style house had picked itself up and headed toward Sunset Boulevard, 300 ft. down. It was a total loss. Also carried away in the hillside slide were a neighbor's $100,000 clifftop mansion, a psychiatrist's $75,000 eyrie, and about half of a $1,000,000, three-year-old apartment complex below them. One of the few residents who refused to evacuate the area was Mrs. Clara Bartlett—she lost only the patio of her $150,000 home. The overall damage is estimated at more than $1,000,000.

First hint of disaster in the once tranquil Castellamare section came two months ago when the pavement started cracking up. Then the whole hillside started moving. Before it slowed down early this month, terra infirma was going west at the rate of 5 ft. an hour. The slide should have come as no surprise. Similar disasters have destroyed hundreds of homes in the region since 1956, prompting repeated official warnings against building on hills and in canyons. But even though insurance companies have refused to reimburse homeowners for damage due to earth slippage, builders and buyers still compete for high-priced "view sites"—and pray that they'll stay that way.

One problem is that even experts disagree on the reasons for slides. Some Castellamare homeowners blame their losses on the builder of the apartment complex, who cut deeply into the hill face to anchor his foundations halfway up. Says one dispossessed resident: "Even a child building sand castles on the beach knows that if the boy next to him cuts away the base of his sand pile, the castle is going to collapse." On the other hand, the contractor's site was checked by geologists before the city issued him a building permit.

Other Castellamare residents argue that the soil was gradually loosened by moisture leaching down from hilltop lawn sprinklers. In any case, homeowners in Pacific Palisades and other "view" areas last week bombarded city officials with demands that all hillside construction be halted immediately. And no one was watering the daisies.