State of Emergency Declared in California City amid Landslide Crisis: 'You Can Almost See the Ground Move'

A state of emergency was declared in one Southern California city as landslides threaten homes and left hundreds without power.

Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. residents are pleading with city council officials to assist with these growing environmental disasters, according to NBC News, KABC-TV and The Washington Post. The coastal city, which is located 30 miles southwest of central Los Angeles has around 42,000 residents.

“(Sunday), Southern California Edison (SCE) notified the city and 105 out of 270 Seaview homes that their electricity service will be discontinued for varying lengths of time, due to the risk of utility equipment igniting a wildfire and other hazards caused by downed wires or damaged equipment impacted by landslide movement,” the city said in an update on Monday, Sept. 2, according to NBC News.

On Tuesday, Sept. 3, California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency.

Per the Post, 140 homes in the city’s Portuguese Bend neighborhood will be without power indefinitely, and 60 homes in the Seaview neighborhood will not have power for a minimum of one week.

Experts say the landslides follows two years of severe storms and rainfall, per NBC News, and that the Palos Verdes Peninsula the city sits on is composed of clay beds and weak rocks, which can prevent water from draining correctly.

And while the land beneath Rancho Palos Verdes has been moving for hundreds of years, Janice Hahn, a Los Angeles county supervisor, said that “the acceleration that’s happening currently is beyond what any of us could have foretold,” according to ABC News.

Per CNN, council member David Bradley said that “the movement has accelerated dramatically over the last 12 months, where some areas are moving up to 10 inches a week.”

“You can almost see the ground move,” Bradley added.

Jonathan Godt, the U.S. Geological Service’s landslides hazards program coordinator, said it can take months or even years for the land to deform after periods of heavy precipitation, per NBC News.

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“For many of those places, it’s not a problem over a human lifespan or even multiple human generations because that’s just a blink of an eye from a geologic perspective,” Godt said. “But, there are instances where a series of heavy rainfall events, or shaking from earthquakes, or other geologic processes going on beneath our feet get those landslides moving again.”

“I think we’re all learning there is no playbook for an emergency like this one,”  Hahn said at a news conference on Monday, Sept. 1, according to The Guardian. “What we do know is many families are struggling, are suffering, are feeling great anxiety about what is happening. They are watching their homes – they are watching their streets – crumble around them.”