‘You can almost see the ground move’: State of emergency declared in California as land movement threatens power lines

(CNN) — California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency Tuesday in the city of Rancho Palos Verdes as severe land shift in the area is threatening the community and disrupting power lines.

Emergency officials will be able to direct state resources toward responding to the threat of the land movement, the governor’s proclamation said.

More than 200 homes in the city, around 30 miles south of Los Angeles, had their power cut Monday as a long-running ground shift close to them is threatening utility lines.

“The city is located on four out of five sub-slides that comprise the Greater Portuguese Landslide Complex,” the governor’s office said. “Land movement at part of the Complex has significantly accelerated following severe storms in 2023 and 2024.”

“This is unprecedented,” Rancho Palos Verdes City Council member Barbara Ferraro said Sunday. “No one knows really, in a way, what to do.”

Southern California Edison cut off electricity Sunday to 140 homes in the Portuguese Bend community, an outage that it says is indefinite because the shifting ground threatens utility poles and raises the risk of fires in the city.

“There was a fire last week,” SoCal Edison spokesperson Kathleen Dunleavy told CNN affiliate KABC. “It was a small fire, but the fire was caused when one of our lines fell because of land movement, and that shows how dangerous this area is.”

An additional 105 customers lost power Monday evening as the company continues to monitor the threat from ground movement.

Rancho Palos Verdes is an oceanfront community in southwestern Los Angeles County, west of Long Beach. It was incorporated as an independent city in 1973.

Officials say the land there has been shifting slowly for decades, but the problem is worse than it used to be. “The movement has accelerated dramatically over the last 12 months, where some areas are moving up to 10 inches a week,” said City Council member David Bradley. “You can almost see the ground move.”

To encourage wary residents to heed evacuation warnings, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said law enforcement is stepping up patrols in the community and launching drones to look for looting. “You’re going to jail if you come here to steal anything,” Luna said in a news conference on Sunday.

Rancho Palos Verdes has been under a local state of emergency since October 2023, and natural gas service was shut off in the Portuguese Bend neighborhood on July 29.

Fourth District Supervisor Janice Hahn said Sunday that Los Angeles County has set aside an additional $5 million to respond to the disaster.

“Yes, this landslide has been moving for decades, but the acceleration that’s happening currently is beyond what any of us could have foretold, and it demands more response from the state, more response from the federal government,” Hahn said.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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