The hillside house that survived the Palisade fire was recently crushed by a main break in water that could be associated with rainy weather and firefighting after it was later broken due to land movement from the flames.
Over the past few months, the Castella Mare Drive house was slowly descending the hillside. After slowly sliding down the slope, the house was cracked in half and destroyed by its own weight and the weight of the land above.
The Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering said the cause of the landslide has not yet been determined. But Nate Onderdonk, a professor of geoscience at California State University Long Beach, said the water could be blamed for slipping downwards and giving way to the hillside.
“The hillside didn’t get magically steep,” Onderdonk said. “You know, the type of rock hasn’t changed, but adding a lot of extra water will make all you do is get unstable on that hillside.”
The underwater excess could potentially have been born from the rainy weather this season, allowing for a water main break that could be linked to the January shootout.
“If this is just an isolated incident of the main water break at this one location, I don’t think it would show a wider landslide issue in the burn area until you get additional water from a storm or something like that,” Onderdonk said.
He was suffering from collapse as the homeowner lives in the property of another Pacific Palisade, which survived the fire. He said he was relieved to hear that his Castella Mare Drive house had not burned, but that relief quickly dissipated due to the slide.
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