DANA POINT : Delay Not Expected to Affect Road’s Opening

Work crews repairing the La Ventana landslide area above Pacific Coast Highway are 10 to 14 days behind schedule, but that should not delay the January opening of the roadway, Dana Point officials said this week.

A recent, brief landslide at the top of the newly constructed 75-foot bluff made it necessary to do some additional demolition this week on two of the homes that were destroyed in the 1993 slide, said Andy Anderson, the city’s emergency services coordinator.

“The (new slide) was not something that came as a surprise,” Anderson said. “But it was something we hoped would not occur. It was just one of those things decided by Mother Nature.”

Anderson said the city and the contractor had expected some shifting of the reconstructed hillside.

He said the time spent on the recent slide and the additional demolition “can be made up during the next few weeks.”

The recent slide undermined some of the remaining pieces of the two homes and left them hanging over the bluff top, with the crews working on the hillside below.

“That created a threat to the safety of the workers, and we couldn’t have that,” Anderson said.

Eight bluff-top homes were destroyed by the landslide on the night of Feb. 22, 1993, when about 40,000 tons of dirt and debris cascaded down to Pacific Coast Highway, which has been closed to traffic ever since.

After months of negotiations with the homeowners, the California Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration, the city of Dana Point in June hired Santa Ana-based Sukut Construction Inc. to repair the hillside.

A series of concrete anchors will be embedded in the hillside, and the entire area will be landscaped and covered with a foot-thick concrete retainer sculpted to look like the natural bluff.

Because Pacific Coast Highway is part of the federal highway system, the federal government is funding the majority of the $3.1-million project.