Landslide victims hope to get Trump’s attention during Rancho Palos Verdes visit

Will he or won’t he talk about the landslide?

That’s the question locals are asking on the Palos Verdes Peninsula as former President Donald J. Trump readies for a Friday morning, Sept. 13, press conference.

Trump, after hosting a high-cost Beverly Hills fundraiser on Thursday, is scheduled to speak at 9 a.m. the following day at his property — Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes. This isn’t the only time Trump has visitied Rancho Palos Verdes. He also stopped by in 2019, when, as president, he paid an impromptu visit to the golf club to meet with city leaders. The president arrived on the Peninsula via the Marine One helicopter. That visit also followed a Beverly Hills fundraising event the evening before.

The public, luxury 18-hole golf course is just down the road from where more than 200 residents are living without power or gas after those public utility companies shut off service, saying unprecedented land movement there has made it unsafe to provide services.

Officials with Trump’s presidential campaign, though, have given no information about the topic of Friday’s press event, and press and public access to it is limited.

But for many dealing with the daily slog of waiting for generators, filling propane tanks and wielding flashlights, what the Republican nominee for the White House — or any politician, for that matter — has to say doesn’t matter.

“I think this is a local issue,” ortuguese Bend resident Tim Kelly said as he took a break from fielding neighbor calls about how to set up Starlink sattelite internet service. The neighborhood lost their Cox Communications internet and televison service this week.

Kelly was adamant that solutions needed to come from city fathers and not from federal or even state sources. The equation residents and city officials are working to solve is how to manage with and slow the deep-seated landslide found 330-feet below the reactivated Portuguese Bend Landslide Complex.

“Even if Gov. Newsom comes here, it’s probably not going to help,” Kelly added.

Newsom declared a state of emergency last week, but hasn’t toured the area, despite calls to do so from city and Los Angeles County officials.

As for city leaders, they are searching for solutions — from any level of government.

RPV Mayor John Cruikshank, in a text message Thursday, said he was attempting to arrange a meeting with Trump ahead of the 9 a.m. press conference. As of Thursday afternoon, Cruikshank hadn’t gotten confirmation he would get an audience with the former — and potentially future — president.

Some residents, though, were being proactive by organizing a rally near Trump National Golf Club for Friday morning. A social media post about the rally urges attendees to wear white T-shirts and bring a sign reading, “Save our homes.”

Sheri Hastings, another Portuguese Bend resident, was planning to attend the rally to support her neighbors.

Her goal, she said, wasn’t necessarily to get Trump’s attention — but to get the word out to other political figures who might attend the press conference.

Still, Hastings added, Trump might be motivated to help with landslide relief as the golf course itself fell victim to land movement in 1999, just three years before he purchased it. On June 2, 1999, a massive 16-acre landslide cut a giant swath through the 18th hole.

Trump purchased the golf course and adjacent land, to be used for luxury housing, in November 2002 for $27 million. At the time, he announced plans to sink an additional $30 million into upgrading the course. It wasn’t until 2006 that the 18th hole was fully restored.

If Hastings could talk to Trump today, she said, she’d tell him: “Hey, you lost your 18th hole in a landslide, but that is minor compared to what we’re going through here.”

Mike Chiles, another RPV resident beset with landslide woes, had just returned to the area after dropping his wife off in Lake Havasu. He came home to a gap in his sliding patio door caused by more movement while he was away. The aluminum frame had pulled away from the glass.

That 2.5-inch gap allowed rats to invade his den and library, he said.

As for Trump’s visit, Chiles said he hopes the candidate does talk about the landslide.

“He’s got a stake in this big time,” Chiles said, echoing Hastings. “If he has a financial stake in this, he might want to do something.”

But in all, Chiles said, this isn’t a national issue. That is, he said, unless the city is forced to shut down Palos Verdes Drive South due to accelerating land movement.

“But when we do lose the drive,” Chiles said, “it’ll cut off the Peninsula. We’ll have only one way in and one way out.”

So as the two candidates for U.S. president stump — Vice President Kamala Harris is focusing on the East while Trump is focusing on the West — one thing is clear, locals said: locally, they’re really on their own.

But locals, Kelly said, need guidance and teamwork as they wrestle with supplying their homes with power on their own.

In his mind, Kelly said, because the major utlitilies are monopolies, that comes with obligations. It shouldn’t be up to homeowners to be responsible for the safety of such critical systems.

“We’ve now taken the liability of the community on our shoulders,” Kelly said, “and that’s not fair.”