Nature’s Fury Exacts Price on Rural Residents

BOULDER CREEK, Calif. —  The captivating vistas and secluded glens of Blue Ridge Drive have always lured people here to exclaim on the beauty and exult in the silence. On Tuesday, the nature that provided such splendor exacted its price.

At 5:04 p.m. Tuesday, the earth below this town of 7,000, situated about 15 miles northeast of Santa Cruz, heaved in fury. And while the big cities of Oakland and San Francisco suffered well-publicized fates as the shock waves struck them, the little town of Boulder Creek and its cousins nestled in the Santa Cruz Mountains suffered as much, in silence.

In Boulder Creek alone, 60 buildings were destroyed or severely damaged. Hundreds of others were battered--but are, for now anyway, presumed reparable. Main Street is awash in broken glass, its scars temporarily bound with sheets of plywood.

But the worst of the fury was felt along Blue Ridge Drive, the winding incline that affords views more precious than dollars. The houses there are rustic and redwood, taking their cues from the sky-scraping trees that surround them. And now, many of them are ruined.

A preliminary accounting showed that 18 of the 50 homes along the road were destroyed or so damaged that they are uninhabitable, according to Capt. Scott McKinnis of the state Department of Forestry.

Robert Buonosera, 41, had settled down in his hillside home to watch the third game of the World Series when he felt the shaking.

“I started walking toward the door,” he said. “The shaking picked up speed and so did I. . . . It was shaking so much I couldn’t run in a straight line. I fell down three or four times trying to get away.”

Outside, on the ground, he looked back.

“I heard timbers snapping--the house was slowly leaning forward,” he said. “All of a sudden it crashed down. And there went my house.”

Half of his house, to add insult, slid down a hill. His was an experience replayed repeatedly along the ridge. While in San Francisco the lowlands felt the full force of the earthquake, here it savaged the ridge houses, the ones grafted along the hillsides.

Some houses that have collapsed onto their foundations still cling tenuously to the hillsides in one last bit of defiance. If they tumble down the hill, as is feared, they will knock askew even more homes.

There have always been known risks that homeowners will trade willingly for views: brush fires, mudslides. Three people died in a 1982 mountain mudslide. So the citizens of Boulder Creek are not foolhardy.

Rise Ciufia, for example, hired a structural engineer to inspect her house before she bought it. He said it was “very solid.” She moved in the last week of July.

Later, she tried to get earthquake insurance--only to find that her insurer had placed a 90-day moratorium on new policies after a quake in August.

On Tuesday evening, nature sent her chimney through the front of her home, tearing as it rent a floor-to-ceiling hole. The foundation shifted and cracked. Walls followed suit

“I am devastated,” she said. “I go from crying to telling myself, ‘I’ll rebuild.’ But where do I get the money to do it? And where do I stay? I have got a million unanswered questions.”

Still, despite the destruction, the vistas hold their lure.

“I love the area,” Buonosera still says. “ I was willing to put up with the risk and I still am. I would /like to rebuild. I am prepared to rebuild if they will let me.”