Mud Pile in La Conchita to Stay Put

In a setback for residents trying to rebuild their town, Ventura County officials said Monday that the mound of earth that buried 13 homes and killed 10 people last week in La Conchita should remain there indefinitely because moving it would be too dangerous.

County workers are fencing off the mud pile and planning to leave it in place to buttress the unstable hillside that rises 600 feet above the coastal community between Ventura and Santa Barbara. At least 400,000 tons of earth swamped the town, leaving a mass of mud and debris 30 feet deep in places.

“If it’s touched, it can move again and cause another slide,” Supervisor John Flynn said. “I say leave it where it is.”

Geologists have advised steering clear of the slide or risk making things worse, said County Executive Officer Johnny Johnston, adding there has even been talk of replacing some of the dirt removed during the rescue operation to help shore up the massive mud pile.

“It just stands to reason that a certain equilibrium or balance can be achieved by keeping it in place,” Johnston said. “We’re not touching that.”

La Conchita has been the site of numerous landslides over the last century, including one in March 1995, when an estimated 600,000 tons of mud crushed nine ocean-view homes during a powerful storm. No one was killed in that landslide.

Officials decided against trying to move the mound after that slide. Instead, they placed a chain-link fence around the slide area and three badly damaged homes, freezing in time the fury of that day.

Longtime resident Mike Bell said he believes that those actions helped stabilize the hillside, noting that one of the homes crumpled in 1995 was not touched by last week’s slide. That home, which has the words “What Slide?” spray-painted on its roof, is located along heavily damaged Vista del Rincon Drive.

Bell, 57, said he favors keeping last week’s slide in place, for now. He is among residents pushing local, state and federal officials to find the money to permanently stabilize the hillside above La Conchita.

“They cannot do a thing to that slide until it’s time to fix the hill, and the hill has to be fixed from the top down,” Bell said.

“In the short term, if they move a bit of that dirt, all it’s going to do is bring more of the slide down.”

County officials have said such a project could cost $100 million or more, and there would be no guarantee it would completely remove the slide risk. Moreover, some county supervisors have questioned whether taxpayers should foot the bill for such work.

The county has urged residents not to return to La Conchita because the slide zone remains highly unstable. But residents of the town’s 150 or so homes have been trickling back through the weekend.

The search for victims was halted last week after the mudslide shifted 6 feet. Residents and geologists reported over the weekend that the slide had moved 15 feet farther downhill.

UC Santa Barbara geology professor Ed Keller said if no long-term fix is planned, it makes sense to keep the slide where it is. But he said that it might not provide the sturdiest support, because the mass is loosely packed and loaded with debris.

“I think the concern is that if you were to remove it all, it could reactivate the whole thing,” he said. “That may happen again in the future anyway, but you wouldn’t want to do anything to hurry it along.”

The final decision on what to do with the mound will come later, Johnston said. Both the county and the property owners whose homes are buried underneath will have a say, he said.

In the meantime, efforts continue this week to clean up and restore services to the mud-ravaged community.

Residents have been told that power could be restored in a matter of days. And an engineer with the Casitas Municipal Water District said the taps could be flowing in La Conchita by the weekend, if crews make enough progress on a water line break.

About two dozen residents had returned to stay as of Monday, although many more said they would go back when the lights came back on.

County officials estimated the cost of rescue and recovery at $750,000 a day, totaling about $3 million from Jan. 10, when the hillside came down, through Thursday, when the rescue operation ended. Expenses will mount as cleanup and other operations move forward.

“The cost, whatever it is, is absolutely necessary,” Flynn said.