Mudslides wash away California homes, dreams

Disaster-stricken homeowners in La Honda, California, negotiated for two years with insurers and disaster agencies, but still lost most of their investment

March 10, 2000
Web posted at: 10:16 a.m. EST (1516 GMT)

In this story: No relief from disaster declaration 'That's it; it's over' RELATED STORIES, SITES

By San Francisco Bureau Chief Greg Lefevre

OAKLAND, California (CNN) -- A gaping bare hillside stands where Gloria Jones' Oakland, California, home used to stand.

What was once her share of the American dream tumbled down the rain soaked slope two years ago.

VIDEO CNN's Greg Lefevre shows the destruction caused by heavy rains in California. Windows Media 28K 80K

For Jones, the trouble never has ended.

"The insurance company called it an act of nature, which meant that the insurance does not pay off those kinds of claims," she said.

Extensive damage from the El Nino storms of 1998 caused much of California to be declared disaster zones. Jones thought that might give her some financial relief.

It did not.

She hired an attorney. She took her case to the local authorities. Then to federal disaster agencies. No deal.

She lost her home, in fact, before she got to live in it. Jones bought the home in Oakland's foothills in October 1997. She and her roommate began moving in the following January.

"We put the last box in the house January 28th, and the trouble started around February 5th -- that weekend that it rained terribly," Jones said. "The foundation started to break away from the back of the house."

City officials immediately placed a "red tag" evacuation notice on her home.

"I didn't understand what red-tagged actually really meant," she said. "What I found out was that when they red-tag your house, it's over. You don't go back. That's it; it's over."

Jones lost a home she'd never even slept in. The red-tag order prevented her from even entering the home to retrieve her belongings.

She lost everything -- her money, her possessions and her good credit. She says the disaster forced her into bankruptcy.

And the trouble continued.

After her house was condemned, her mortgage company sold her mortgage to another company, and that one to another. In each case, Jones has had to produce new documentation of her bankruptcy.

This week she watched in knowing sympathy as another neighborhood across town lost homes to mudslides.

Erik Erikson's backyard sits at the base of a 200-foot hill. Tons of that dirt sloughed off the hillside and is now slumped against the back of his house.

"I got a little bit of a problem," Erikson said. "We can't help but to have seen this coming. But when it does come it kind of catches you."

A few doors away, the slide is slowly pushing a neighbor's home toward the street.

Earlier this week, another neighborhood slides away

"I hope that our place isn't in as much jeopardy as the house down the street," Erikson says.

How long will this adventure last?

"Two years, four years," Erikson says. "Hopefully we're going to be back into our place."

Jones says she can predict the next few years of these families' lives.

"My advice," she said, "is, don't relax and feel like the insurance company is going to help you, that they're going to have to dig in deep; put on their seat belt and get ready for the ride that they're going to have. They're going to find that there's going to be nobody out there to help them."

Forty miles to the south, families in slide-ravaged La Honda worked for two years to settle claims on nine homes wiped out in a massive landslide. Most lost more than 70-percent of their investment.

The loss of homes, now in the dozens this winter, is made all the more traumatic by the high price of housing in the Bay Area.

Unable to buy another home, Jones now rents. She says she still receives mortgage bills -- for a house two years gone, against a family long since insolvent.

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El Nino: Research, Forecasts and Observations
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