CALIFORNIA, Sept 08 (BBC): The land is moving and sinking so fast in parts of the California community of Rancho Palos Verdes that authorities have switched off gas and electricity "indefinitely" to hundreds of homes.
The area has long grappled with unstable land but now the landslides causing the problem have accelerated. Some buildings could be swallowed completely.
Power company Southern California Edison had to cut power last week "to avoid the risk of utility equipment igniting a wildfire" in the rugged areas where the land is shifting.
SoCalGas began to shut off natural gas services to the area in May, and on Friday expanded the outage to 54 more homes after a gas line break last week.
The neighborhood of Portuguese Bend is the worst hit by the problem. City officials issued an evacuation warning there a week ago. Some residents left, but others are determined to stay.
They're banding together, installing generators as well as the sewer system and pumps needed to expel the groundwater causing the landslides. One man's house "split in half", Jackie Golison told the BBC on a recent tour of her neighborhood.
Driving on buckled roads, Ms Golison said a few months ago streets were smooth. Now they're like the Disney attraction "Mr Toad's Wild Ride". She points to a home ripped off its foundations with the front door elevated about 8ft from the ground. The scene looks like the aftermath of an earthquake.
"It's worse than an earthquake," she said. "It's heaven in here though. Pure bliss when it's not moving." Portuguese Bend has ocean views and sea breezes. Horses and peacocks roam the pepper tree-lined streets.
The ground in the affluent neighbourhood has been shifting for decades, usually about a manageable foot a year. Now it's moving that amount a week, as two years of heavy rains accelerated the shift, causing irreparable damage to some homes and prompting California to declare a state of emergency.
Not everyone can afford to invest in moving off-grid - the sewer system is now being run by generators paid for by locals - or they worry that the city will shut the roads and they will be forced to leave anyway.
Mayor John Cruikshank, a civil engineer, said he thinks neighborhoods like Portuguese Bend will need to stay off-grid to survive. He's speaking to private companies about possibly installing power walls, which store energy for later use.
He's also trying to convince the state to extend the emergency declaration to get funding to help individual homeowners.
"The forces of nature sometimes are much more than we know how to control or have the ability to control," he said. "We're still searching for engineering solutions."
While the land has always been shifting under their feet, residents of Rancho Palos Verdes understand that climate change is exacerbating their problems.
"The two years of rain didn't help," said Jay Golison, Jackie's husband. "A drought, as bad as it sounds, sounds pretty good to us right now."
