Stabilizing the Situation

Caltrans took the unusual step Friday of offering to buy outright or pay for repairs to homes damaged by sliding earth in an Anaheim neighborhood where a large fissure threatens several hilltop properties, a Caltrans official said.

“Yes, we intend to do that, but we still have to do several assessments,” said Albert Miranda, a Caltrans spokesman.

The state agency alerted residents of seven ridge-top homes along East Maple Tree Drive on Thursday that their property was in jeopardy and advised them to leave the upscale neighborhood, where houses are valued at $300,000 to $400,000.

Caltrans has been working in the area since 1996 and owns the hillside below the ridge. In February of this year, the agency started a $780,000 slope stabilization project on a section of hillside near the junction of the Costa Mesa and Riverside freeways, just below the problem bluff.

Miranda characterized the area as “an historical slide” zone dating back to 1971. “The amount of rain we’ve had during this El Nino year has compounded the problem,” he said.

The agency’s assessment of the damage will include further soil sampling and an inspection of homes in the area, Miranda said.

Once Caltrans completes its evaluation, Miranda said, officials will “decide whether it’s cost-effective to repair a home or purchase it.” The agency pays market value, he said, and will pick up the tab for residents’ relocation costs.

Word of the agency’s decision late Friday caught residents by surprise.

“This is great news! Omigosh! I sure hope everything works out. It’s a relief to know this,” said Patrick Patterson, 37, whose house is one of the seven threatened.

The night before, Patterson had packed his family into the car and moved them to a relative’s house. He returned to keep watch in the house amid sounds of doorways and hardwood floors creaking.

“I spent the night farthest from the edge of the bluff,” he said.

Patterson, who thinks Caltrans work is responsible for the instability of the slope, pointed to a fissure in his backyard that he said developed on Feb. 19.

“On that same exact day, I looked down the hill and Caltrans had a bunch of big heavy machinery,” Patterson said.

That fissure now is more than a foot wide and extends across other properties.

The latest offer to reimburse residents for damage to their homes is not unprecedented. The agency paid $2.3 million for five homes on Maple Tree Drive after a January 1997 slide threatened to undermine them.

Caltrans officials said they chose to make offers to the homeowners because the agency owns the adjacent property below.

Caltrans might install concrete “nails”--beams about 30 feet long--into the hillside to help stabilize it, a process that was used successfully by private contractors to stop slippage after the Capistrano Beach landslide in 1993.

Edward MacNew, one of the residents who sold to Caltrans last year, said the agency made him a reasonable offer for his house, where Caltrans used the concrete-nail technique.

“The house is just fine now,” he said Friday. “The floors are flat, and everything’s OK.”

But anxiety was high among residents Friday as they read accounts of Thursday night’s evacuation.

One resident, Lisa Lewis, said everybody wants answers.

“The curiosity here is, is it just Maple Tree?” Lewis said, referring to the unstable ground. “Where does it stop?”