RANCHO PALOS VERDES — Southern California Edison will cut off power Sunday at noon to 140 homes in the Portuguese Bend Community Association neighborhood of Rancho Palos Verdes, weeks after gas service was shut down in the area amid enduring land-movement worries. Last month, Southern California Gas Company abruptly shut off service to 135 homes in the area.
City officials issued an evacuation warning Saturday about 3 p.m. amid word of the the power shutoff. Residents were warned not to use water or plumbing after the electricity is shut off for fear of triggering a sewage spill in the area.
The steady, creeping landslide has rattled the Rancho Palos Verdes community for many months. Just this week, the Rancho Palos Verdes City Council extended a local emergency, spurred by the land movement that increased following the heavy rains that impacted the area starting in the spring of 2023.
“We know this is a difficult time for Rancho Palos Verdes and we’ve been looking for ways that we can keep the power flowing,” said Gabriela Ornelas, spokesperson with Southern California Edison.
“At this point land movement in Rancho Palos Verdes has created such a dangerous situation that we must make the difficult decision to disconnect power indefinitely to keep that community safe,” she added.
Ornelas said the power shutoff will impact a total of 193 accounts — 140 homes and 53 business accounts.
BREAKING: Rancho Palos Verdes residents along the Portugese bend landslide complex will lose power tomorrow. They had less than a 24 hour warning. About 135 homes already don’t have gas. Haven’t confirmed yet how many homes are impacted. @knxnews pic.twitter.com/sudh6cqWBK
— Nataly Tavidian (@NatalyTavidian) August 31, 2024
The emergency notice posted Saturday warned residents to be ready to evacuate. “SCE has determined there is a public safety threat. Electricity service will be discontinued in these zones effective Sunday, September 1 at 12 p.m. PST,” Saturday’s city statement said. “DO NOT USE WATER OR PLUMBING AFTER THE POWER IS SHUT OFF — THIS COULD RESULT IN A SEWER SPILL. All persons in these zones should prepare to evacuate and seek alternative housing. Pack important documents, medications, and essential items. Make arrangements for pets and animals.”
Officials said an emergency assistance center for impacted residents would be open on Sunday from 11 a.m.-6 p.m. at the Ladera Linda Community Center at 32201 Forrestal Drive.
The affected areas can be found at rpvca.gov/1707/Land-Movement-Updates. Officials said residents could also check to see if they were in the evacuation area at protect.genasys.com/search or on the genasys Protect app.
An Edison customer care vehicle will be in the area Sunday through Tuesday, Ornelas said, at Narcissa Drive and Fruit Tree Road. Residents will be able to connect to power at the vehicle and perform such tasks as charging cell phones.
Ornelas said customers can get information about the shutoff at 1-800-250-7339 or online at sce.com/rpv.
Rancho Palos Verdes officials learned of Edison’s decision on Friday evening, said Mayor John Cruikshank, who added that the city didn’t have a say in the decision.
City officials asked if they could delay the shutoff until after the long Labor Day weekend, but were told no.
“They basically dictated everything” he said
The mayor said the city would do everything they could to help displaced residents. City officials implored Edison to do its part, too, Cruikshank said.
“We need Edison to do that” said Cruikshank. “I know overhead power is typical, but they are our power provider and they need to supply it — whether it’s batteries, generators, something.”
Ornelas said a fire on Thursday, near Narcissa Drive in the Portuguese Bend area, helped accelerate Edison’s decision. The small blaze was ignited after a power line fell, setting shrubs afire nearby. The fire was put out promptly, but concern endured among Edison’s decision-makers.
“(The fire) demonstrated that we cannot mitigate the public safety risk from the land movement in the area we are disconnecting,” she said. “Since the accelerated land movement continues to damage our electric equipment, we need to turn off power to keep the public safe.”
“I don’t understand why we would need suddenly now to be evacuated because we’ve been running on generators and solar batteries,” said Nina Ritter, owner of Vanderlip Estate, via text, who got word of the shutoff while traveling to the East Coast.
Edison won’t be providing generators to residents, citing safety risks. “Stable grounds are essential for generators,” Ornelas said. “There are safety concerns in areas where there is continued land movement with generators.”
Ornelas added that the situation was still fluid. “We are still assessing the situation, we are looking for ways to provide power in a safe and reliable way while knowing that the ground will continue to move.”
The Palos Verdes Peninsula’s largest city first declared a local state of emergency last October because of unprecedented rains that instigated land movement that has since created havoc on roads, homes, hiking trails and a historic structure in the city. That state of emergency, which helps the city seek state and federal funds, was extended to Oct. 5 by the City Council.
The impetus for the latest extension of the emergency declaration, approved last week, stems from SoCal Gas’s decision to notify the city and residents in the Portuguese Bend community on July 27 that their natural gas was going to be shut off two days later, on July 29.
“Despite significant efforts made by staff to request additional time for residents to prepare (so long as it was safe to do so),” a city staff report said, “SoCalGas cited that major damage to gas lines caused by the continuous land movement made it untenable to safely provide service to residents within the area.”
The shutoff “caused major disruptions” to the neighborhood and hundreds of residents “who rely on necessary gas appliances to heat homes, cook meals, and other daily functions that contribute to public health and safety, particularly for vulnerable populations such as the elderly, those with medical conditions, and children,” the staff report said.
Residents spent the first weekend after the gas shutoff hustling to find propane and electric alternatives so they could stay in their homes. Officials did not order evacuations at that time because no gas leaks were detected.
Gas company officials said the area “continues to experience significant new land movement damaging roads, homes and further threatening the safety of SoCalGas’ infrastructure.”
Edison officials sent a notice on July 30 to 500 homes in Portuguese Bend and several other neighborhoods about possibly discontinuing electricity in their area, according to Public Works Director Ramzi Awwad.
The “city immediately began discussions with SCE about how to minimize the potential impact of these homes,” Awwad said in early August.
“We asked SCE to increase maintenance frequency, but also to begin work to separate the circuit, to reduce the potential for broader impact if there is an isolated area that is severely impacted by the landslide,” Awwad said. “SCE has informed us that they are in the design process for that, and that could take three to four months, depending on a number of variables.”
The city stressed to SCE that “there is a lot at stake with the electric power,” including the impacted homes but also the dewatering wells, Awwad added.
“Our operation to slow down the landslide would be significantly impaired,” Awwad said. “The Abalone Cove sewer relies on electric power, and communications infrastructure does as well. We are looking at backup plans, but reiterating to SCE the critical importance of maintaining electric power.”
Recently, the community learned that the land movement actually has its source much deeper into the Earth than experts previously thought.
After drilling past a 165-foot slip plane of the slide to relieve pressure from emergency hydraugers pumping out ground water to stabilize the land, the city’s geology team found another slip plane — this one at twice the depth.
This new, deeper slip plane is at about 330-feet below the surface, Awwad said during this week’s RPV City Council meeting. The revelation is yet another complication the city must deal with as it tries to control the land movement that has upended much of RPV’s normal way of life.
“The entire city is on hold trying to fix this problem,” said Mayor John Cruikshank.
The main issue is the speed of this deeper slide, Awwad said.
“The deeper slide is moving much faster,” he said. “It’s moving several times faster than the shallower slide.”
Sixteen Rancho Palos Verdes residents, meanwhile, have filed a lawsuit against the city, neighboring Rolling Hills and several other government agencies, accusing them of contributing and failing to prevent the landslide acceleration in RPV that has caused damage to their properties.
RPV, as well as fellow defendants California Water Service Co. and Los Angeles County, declined to comment on the lawsuit. The other defendants did not return requests for comment.
The 16 residents all live within the Seaview or Beach Club neighborhoods of Rancho Palos Verdes, where two homes have been red-tagged because the Portuguese Bend Landslide Complex has reactivated. The steady moving land has upended roadways, closed beloved hiking trails, shuttered the iconic Wayfarers Chapel and left some residents without gas or electricity.
RPV, Rolling HIlls, Los Angeles County, Cal Water and a subcontractor, as well as a community association and a landslide abatement district, are all named as defendants in the complaint, which the ACTS LAW group filed on Aug. 16 in Los Angeles Superior Court.
In general, the lawsuit accused the two cities and their associations for failing to fix a well-known problem, the county and Cal Water for failing to maintain sewers and water mains, and a subcontractor for taking too long to perform repairs and using non-industry practices.
Specifically, the lawsuit accuses RPV of knowing about the landslide risks before the 2023 rain deluge that was a catalyst for the land movement’s acceleration, pointing to a 1993 memo and a 2006 evaluation from geologists that warned about the possible land movement and recommended mitigation measures. The suit also accuses Rolling Hills, which does not have a public sewer, of contributing to ground water problems with decades-old septic tanks and leach fields.
City News Service contributed to this report
