‘Just too unstable’: Electricity to be cut to 140 homes facing Rancho Palos Verdes landslide

Weeks after homes in Rancho Palos Verdes’ Portuguese Bend neighborhood lost gas due to dangerous land movement, Southern California Edison officials have delivered another blow to those living on this complex of worsening landslides: Electricity will be cut off Sunday at noon.

Residents of 140 homes, as well as some nearby city equipment powered by the utility, will have power lines deactivated indefinitely, said David Eisenhauer, a SoCal Edison spokesperson.

“The ground is just too unstable,” he said. “It’s become too dangerous for us to continue to provide power.”

Rancho Palos Verdes issued an evacuation warning for the Portuguese Bend area shortly after 3 p.m. Saturday, citing the impending loss of power. It said people there should not use water or plumbing after the electricity is shut off, because doing so could “result in a sewer spill.”

Recently, land movement in this area has continued to be recorded at unprecedented rates: as much as a foot a week. That’s created increasing challenges for residents, first responders, city officials and utilities, as infrastructure damage and safety concerns escalate.

The homes that will lose power were notified Saturday of the shut-off. Those residents are the same ones who had their gas service cut almost a month ago.

Portuguese Bend resident Mike Hong said Saturday that he’d learned of the impending shut-off only an hour earlier.

“They are giving us even less time than the gas company,” said Hong, who has been cooking with hot plates, an option that will end Sunday. “Don’t abandon us. Where’s the humanity in this?”

SoCal Edison had warned residents that this was a possibility after gas service was cut. Eisenhauer said there wasn’t one issue that led to this decision, but said it was made to “keep the community safe.”

On Thursday, a small fire ignited near Narcissa Drive in Portuguese Bend. Eisenhauer said it started after a power line fell and sparked nearby vegetation. Though the blaze was quickly extinguished, he said the incident demonstrated the perilous state of things.

“We know this is a difficult time for Rancho Palos Verdes and we’ve been looking for ways to keep the power flowing,” Eisenhauer said. “At this point land movement has created such a dangerous situation that we must make the difficult decision to disconnect power indefinitely.”

Eisenhauer said there are no other immediate plans to extend the power shutoff to nearby neighborhoods also facing land movement, but said it’s a fluid situation that the utility is “monitoring constantly.”

He said SoCal Edison will have a “community crew vehicle” in the neighborhood by Sunday with water and information for residents. He said the utility is not providing generators because the ground is not stable enough to install them.

City officials have said that losing electricity would create new safety issues, because power is key for telecommunications lines, the sewer system and the fleet of pumps that help mitigate ongoing land movement by expelling the groundwater that geologists say causes it.

Representatives for the city of Rancho Palos Verdes didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Officials with California Water Service, which provides the area with water, have said they have no plans to discontinue their service, but it isn’t yet clear if that might have changed in recent days.