Rancho Palos Verdes, a coastal community in the Los Angeles area, could be described as a geological ticking time bomb.
The affluent city sits atop steep cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean that, for hundreds of years, have been slowly shifting and giving way.
Now, that movement is accelerating. Whereas the ground slid downward 8 inches annually in years past, it has lurched 13 inches per week in some places between July and August.
The resulting landslides have ripped apart seaside mansions, buckled roads and forced utility provider Southern California Edison to cut electricity to nearly 250 homes to avoid the possibility of fires.
“Eight inches a year is measurable and they have had to do repairs to the road that crosses the area, but now it’s moving so rapidly that they’ve had to just close a number of roads, turn off the gas supply and cut electricity,” said Eric Fielding, a geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “It’s crazy but you can’t keep re-installing electric wires every week.”
In Rancho Palos Verdes’ Portuguese Bend neighborhood, 140 homes will be without power indefinitely, while around 60 in the city’s Seaview section will be without service for a week or longer.
R&I – TP
RandyMarsh
Article URL : https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/california-city-hit-landslides-slipping-may-not-stoppable-rcna169527