Rancho Palos Verdes residents rally to solve landslide woes on their own

Colleen Miller’s 3-year-old grandson was fed up:

“We’re having peanut butter and jelly? Again?”

The toddler lodged the complaint while hanging out at his grandmother’s Rancho Palos Verdes home, in the Portuguese Bend area — where an ongoing landslide has frustrated residents and vexed city officials.

When a toddler grouses about eating PB+Js, you know things are bad.

Indeed, culinary variety isn’t an option right now. Miller has no way to cook her grandson a hot meal. She also has no cell service or internet — so ordering is out.

Miller has no television, either, and in the evenings, once the sun sets on the picturesque Peninsula, she reflexively reaches for a light switch, despite holding a lantern in her other hand. The reflex is a jolting reminder that she, like more than 200 other RPV residents, has no power.

Like many of her neighbors, Miller is navigating life in RPV’s Greater Portuguese Bend Landslide Complex after utility companies recently stopped servicing the area. Miller has lived in her home on Cinnamon Lane for nearly 40 years. For most of that time, it was idyllic living. The danger that lurked below wasn’t noticeable — and so, largely ignored. And then rains drenched the Peninsula the last two winters, oversaturating and destabilizing the earth. The land movement accelerated.

“For 36 of those years, my house never moved,” Miller said. “Now, I guess it’s moving toward the ocean.”

Her home, unlike some others in the area, has minimal damage inside. But it seems to be moving in concert with the landslide at a clip of up to 12 feet per week now. Her partner, Timothy Allen, regularly uses a tractor to fill a fissure in her driveway with dirt.

The havoc the landslide has wrought over the last two years has become increasingly severe, with fissures threatening to sunder homes, the iconic Wayfarers Chapel being dismantled (with hopes to erect it somewhere else), hiking trails being closed, road repair crews fighting a futile battle to keep thoroughfares save to drive on, and city officials scrambling to find solutions.

And now, more than 200 households in the Portuguese Bend, Seaview and Beach Club neighborhoods are living without electricity or natural gas, a number that will likely creep higher, with Southern California Edison set to shut off power to another 54 homes in the Beach Club area on Monday, Sept. 9. Cox Communications, meanwhile, will disconnect 146 customers in the Portuguese Bend Community Association on Monday.

All together, residents find themselves in a bleak reality more befitting the cattle ranchers and shepherds who lived on the Peninsula at the end of the 19th century — rather than folks accustomed to cell phones, microwaves and central heating.

But for now, and likely the forseeable future, that is the reality, with several residents saying they are essentially camping in their own homes.

They rely on out-of-area friends or relatives to charge phones and to shower. People with know-how and the right equipment – like Allen – ride their tractors over to neighbors to help fill fissures. Some, who don’t have gravity-powered sewers, have to drive down the hill to portable toilets.

And needed resources seem to be at a premium. Residents reported that the local Costco was out of the $1,000 generators favored by residents on Thursday, while 7-Eleven and Smart and Final were both out of ice on Friday.

Despite these challenges, there’s a steadfast spirit of cooperation on the hill. As the city, county and state grapple with how to slow and eventually stop the landslide, residents in the area have decided to go it alone.

A group of locals, for example, came to the rescue to keep the sewer system running on Sunday, Sept. 1, after the area lost power. Gravity-assisted sewers can work without power, but those without a downhill slope need grinders to move the solid waste.

That group of residents acquired three diesel-fueled generators, and worked with the city’s public works team and a city-hired electrician to install the system, which is keeping residents from losing the most essential of services, said City Manager Ara Mihranian.

“The city will be replacing the diesel generators with propane generators in the days to come,” Mihranian said, “followed by what we hope will be battery powered generators.”

Retired contractor Mike Chiles was one of the heroes that day. And it’s that sort of cooperation, he said, that is needed to beat the ever-inching landslide.

“My community has been so complacent,” Chiles said. “We’re sitting back and waiting for people to take care of us and nobody has.”

Community volunteers, he added, need to join with the city and with Edison to solve the landslide problem.

“We have to do the work,” Chiles said.

Frayed nerves, lack of supplies

After losing SoCal Gas service at the end of July, and then Edison electricity over Labor Day weekend, nerves are frayed. Once-flustered residents are now frustrated as they desperately seek solutions that will allow them to remain in their homes.

So far, the city has issued an evacuation warning, but no order to vacate properties. It’s unknown when, or even if, such an order could come.

“It’s hard enough to be crying all day,” said resident Lisa Gladstone. “But to be mad all day, too, that’s really exhausting.”

Gladstone has rented on the Peninsula most of her adult life. Finally, in 2011, she was able to buy a home on Cinnamon Lane in Portuguese Bend.

Gladstone spent Thursday at a friend’s house charging her cell phone, and trying to reach her bank to coordinate paying all the expenses she’s incurred from converting to a generator.

It’s hard enough finding a customer service person to help under normal circumstances, she said. That task is even more fraught when your cell phone’s battery, not a precious resource is dwindling while yours stuck on hold — and don’t have the luxury of just plugging your phone into your wall.

The national attention the RPV landslide is getting, meanwhile, is also causing problems, Gladstone said.

For her, a last straw moment came on Thursday, when she heard a propane company based in Kansas pulled workers off a job while setting up a neighbor’s alternative fuel system.

“We’ve spent weeks getting everything set up,” Gladstone said.

“When we finally have one thing setup (this happens,” she added. “We can’t take anymore.”

Ferrell Gas confirmed that it has, indeed, temporarily suspended setting up new customers. For existing customers, the company is still setting tanks and making deliveries in areas where it is safe to do so.

“Out of an abundance of caution, we’ve temporarily suspended setting up new customers in areas impacted by ongoing land movement in Southern California,” Ferrell spokesperson Scott Brockelmeyer said in a statement. “As soon as city officials and authorities monitoring the situation deem the land to be stable, we will resume deliveries and other service in those impacted areas.”

Brockelmeyer declined to disclose how many clients Ferrell was servicing in RPV.

While it’s unclear how many other propane companies, or the like, are still operating in the area, Ferrell suspending services means one fewer resource for residents already desperate for help.

Businesses impacted too

It’s not only residents who are scrambling for generators and alternative fuels. For the Peninsula’s few impacted businesses, the energy sources have to be bigger and require more coordination.

Jim York, who owns Catalina View Gardens in Portuguese Bend, is preparing for his first wedding of the season — but without gas or electric service.

York has rented a massive diesel-powered generator and will acquire a 500-gallon diesel fuel tank. Another 1,000-gallon propane tank will handle cooktops and hot water heaters. Eventually, York said, he’ll replace the rented generator with propane-powered ones. And just in case his gravity-based sewer system fails, he’s brought in some luxury portable toilets.

“Our goal is to be off the grid,” York said by phone on Wednesday, the day workers harvested five tons of pinot noir grapes in his vineyard.

York has weddings booked until the end of October, he said. And by then, he’s hoping to be hooked up to solar power.

For now, York said, the diesel generator is chugging along, powering his buildings.

But his long-term plans may depend on the landslide.

“We might be permanently out of the wedding business,” he said.

How could it come to this?

As the days wear on and with no end in sight for their homestead camping, residents are looking someone or something to blame beyond the landslide itself.

They are critical of all levels of government – city, county and state – for letting a known problem linger.

“This community of people, we’ve been reporting this since November of last year,” Gladstone said, adding that public agencies should have acted faster.

Chiles agreed.

“We tracked the whole thing,” Chiles said. “We bought into the landslide. We let it happen. We could have stopped it.”

Help could finally be on the way after Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in RPV earlier this week. And City officials, for their part, said they are trying to fix the problem as best they can.

Mihranian, the town’s city manager, said RPV is prioritizing resident requests over those from the media and others. The city communicates daily with neighborhood homeowners associations and attends neighborhood meetings when invited, he said.

“We are all working around the clock for the residents,” Mihranian said, “and they are our priority.”

The city is also setting up another resource center for next week, the city manager said. It is scheduled to take place from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 11, at Ladera Linda Community Center.

The city, Mihranian said, is also working to set up portable bathrooms and shower facilities and portable street lights for security in impacted neighborhoods.

The city has also hired a consultant to devise a plan to create a microgrid to energize neighborhoods that currently lack power.

But officials also admit that when it comes to stopping the landslide, RPV is out of its depth.

“This is a bigger crisis than any city should have to handle on their own,” LA County Supervisor Janice Hahn said in an email late last month. “People are in trouble and their homes are crumbling around them.”

Residents, meanwhile, are continuing to solve their own problems.

One group meets every Sunday evening in Portuguese Bend to rally resources and send help to vulnerable residents.

Gladstone’s husband, a doctor, regularly does wellness checks on residents with Parkinson’s disease.

Raffaello Ristorante, a joint in San Pedro, sent over pizza and Italian food to the neighborhood one night, Miller said. And she’s also got a lead on a San Pedro Meals on Wheels group that can provide hot food for $8.50 per serving.

Miller was also the recipient of an act of kindness from an old college friend, who surprised her recently by dropping off 10 solar-powered cell phone chargers on her front porch.

Miller said she had no idea such a thing existed. And when she dropped off one at an elderly neighbor’s home, the woman cried.

That got Miller thinking about what else is out there. So Miller will spearhead an information table at the Narcissa Drive gate, right off Palos Verdes Drive South, on Sunday. She’ll be there with other locals from 1 p.m to 5 p.m. to gather and distribute ideas, solutions and resources.

After all, Miller said, when you need something but lack power and access to the internet, you can’t just order it on Amazon.

So until reinforcements arrive, Miller and her fellow residents in the Portuguese Bend, Seaview and Beach Club neighborhoods will keep navigating their upended lives. They will deal with the fissures and the shifting earth. They will manage without power, whether by buying generators — or resigning themselves to homestead camping.

Even if it means eating, to the chagrin of toddlers and their grandmothers, a few more PB & Js.

Because they don’t have a choice.