Published: June 20, 2008 10:56 pm         

Rains blamed for land slide

City works to assist Logan Avenue residents

DANVILLE — Tammy Lopez, a single mom of three children, is faced with an uncertain future after city officials on Thursday presented an engineering report that suggests she evacuate her home. The hillside behind her home in the 100 block of Logan Avenue is sliding due to all the recent rain.

“I have three stories of brick home and an exposed foundation. If the house falls, I’m done,” she said.

Lopez had yet to evacuate Thursday night, jokingly saying she’ll spend more time in the front half of her house.

She experienced a similar situation a decade ago when her back yard dropped about 6 feet.

She spent thousands of dollars to build a retaining wall and rebuild the back yard.

The city helped provide some dirt then, but did little else to help with the exposed foundation, corner of her garage and other cracking issues, or provide more warnings for the future.

She thought the hillside down to the park behind her home was city-owned property, but she was told it was hers.“Now I’m out of a home,” Lopez said.

Lopez’s home and five other properties, including Dr. Bhirom Buranakul’s parking lot and some vacant properties, have been affected by the land shifting. The backs of those properties drop back to Ellsworth Park.

At least one of the residential structures dates back to 1902.

“My building so far looks good,” Buranakul said. “We saw one crack, but it could be an old crack.”

But part of his parking lot has cracked off.

“That is a major thing for our community,” he said about the cracking extending from the parking lot to northern residential properties.

Buranakul is talking with his insurance company, and O’Neil Brothers and Pancoast Construction to see what can be done to reconstruct the parking lot.

He said this is the first “slope failure” problem he’s had with the property, believed to have been caused by all the rain.

Buranakul is trying to work out an agreement that would allow his patients to use the hair salon parking lot across the street in the meantime.

Mayor Scott Eisenhauer said Friday the city will pay for a study that will include soil borings, options for resolution and costs of those options.

The two land studies could cost the city about $15,000.

Eisenhauer said the city is trying to help the property owners, who likely don’t have the resources for the studies, make the best short- and long-term decisions.

“Due to the large amounts of rain which we have received, land near the 100 block of Logan Avenue has begun to slide. Previous land slidings had been brought to our attention three weeks ago by a resident (Lopez) in the 100 block who told us of movement which occurred eight to 10 years ago,” he said.

He stated Lopez also shared her concern for more recent movement and its potential to impact her back yard.

Eisenhauer asked Public Works Director Doug Ahrens and City Engineer David Schnelle to review Lopez’s concerns.

Lopez claims that not until Buranakul called the city about a week ago, did officials do more about the issue.

“The issue was exacerbated with the massive amounts of rain we received over the course of the last two weeks, and a phone call to our office on Monday noting the cracking in the parking lot of a doctor’s office on Logan Avenue,” Eisenhauer said through e-mail.

He said noting the amount of movement which had occurred, Ahrens and Schnelle reviewed all of the properties along the 100 block of Logan Avenue, as well as Ellsworth Park which lies at the foot of the slope.

Part of Ellsworth Park was blocked off on Monday, but has since been reopened.

“After a full analysis on Monday, it was decided on Tuesday that it was best to engage the opinion of a geotechnical engineer. The city did so to gain an opinion on the land movement which we would share with the landowners, offsetting a cost they would normally have to endure individually,” Eisenhauer said.

City officials received the geotechnical engineer’s opinion which denotes some movement in the land along the hillside west of Logan Avenue and cautioned that some structures exist on the line of movement.

Ahrens and Schnelle notified property owners Thursday.

“While it is true the engineer finds some structures may be at risk, at no time did we indicate to the property owners that they must evacuate their properties,” Eisenhauer said. “Our only role in this issue is notification of information which has been provided to us by a geotechnical engineer.”

He said the city incurred the cost to hire the geotechnical engineer, unknown at the moment, because “we believe it was in the best interest for each property owner in the area to have some indication as to the movement of the land.”

“Each property owner certainly has the ability to contract their own engineer to provide them with another opinion, and the decision to remain in the residence or seek other housing options is strictly up to them. We did not mandate an evacuation nor express to anyone that their home is at imminent risk ... only that the geotechnical engineer had some concerns regarding the movement of the land,” Eisenhauer further states.

The engineering report states, “We believe it would be prudent to limit occupancy until the foundations for the structures have been underpinned to stable ground or the slope stability issue has been rectified.”

City officials have expressed there are social service agencies available for property owners’ needs, and the city’s human relations manager will assist upon request.

Eisenhauer said the city will continue to monitor the area, notify property owners of information it receives and will review options, if any, to resolve the situation.

“Today, we don’t know the feasibility. I can’t say if there are any (options),” he said on Friday.