A cliffside home in Newport Beach’s Dover Shores neighborhood was torn down Thursday, March 16, two weeks after being red-tagged when the land it was built on became unstable, causing its patio to slide down the hillside over Back Bay.
In just a few hours Thursday afternoon, work crews had at least half the home demolished, Councilmember Erik Weigand said. “I was right there, and it was heartbreaking.
“It was 11 a.m., and they started with the garage,” he said. “Their personal stuff was still in the house. Thirty years of memories, and it was gone in a second.”
By early afternoon, just a few walls were still standing, and by 4 p.m., the home on Galaxy Drive was gone from the cliff with a panoramic view of the Back Back and the Pacific Ocean.
The 1960s-era home was red-tagged by city officials, after its back patio and surrounding vegetation dropped off and crashed down the hillside on March 3. City-hired geologists and public works officials determined the hillside was unstable. The residences to either side were yellow-tagged.
City officials and private geologists hired by the home’s owners continued to monitor the soil and observed further movement. The homeowners asked the city for a demolition permit, which was issued immediately, said John Pope, spokesman for the city of Newport Beach.
The homes on either side of the demolished house have also been given expedited permits so they can begin efforts to stabilize their properties, Weigand said. One of the homeowners hired a contractor who did work on the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades and is having holes drilled to place more caissons under the property, he said.
In the meantime, city crews have been making sure more water from recent storms doesn’t aggravate the situation for nearby homeowners. A city storm drain between the now-demolished home and one of the yellow-tagged neighbors was damaged in the slide, Weigand said.
Following that, and before the recent two storms, crews installed temporary pumps to divert water away from the homes and down to Back Bay.
“Everybody is on edge and worried because we don’t have answers of what caused it,” said Ursula Braeger, a nearby resident who watched with sadness Thursday as her longtime neighbors lost their home.
“We don’t know if it’s water that soaked into the ground,” she said. Living on a slope, “we’ve always been concerned and we did what we could to add plants and tarp the hillside.”
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