California doctor refuses to move from cliffside mansion despite warning it could slide into the ocean
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Three multimillion-dollar homes teetering on the edge of a cliff in Southern California have been deemed safe to live in — despite a landslide taking out a large part of the cliff from underneath them.
Historic storms that inundated the Golden State earlier this month left the Dana Point mansions in precarious positions and at risk of falling into the Pacific Ocean.
According to records, the priciest home in the coastline complex is a $15.9 million, four-bedroom property registered to a local radiologist, 82-year-old Lewis Bruggeman.
“The house is fine, it’s not threatened and it will not be red-tagged,” Bruggeman told KCAL.
“The city agrees that there’s no major structural issue with the house.”
Dana Point City Manager Mike Killebrew told CBS News that a geotechnical engineer and building sector from the city inspected one of the three mansions — the A-frame home furthest out on the edge — and found that there is “no imminent threat to that home.”
“The city’s geotechnical engineer and a building sector went out to the site to assess the situation, as well as talk with the homeowner who owns the residence and slope where the failure occurred,” he said.
The collapse of part of the Dana Point cliff followed heavy rains in southern California earlier this month, which caused landslides and flooding across the region.
Video footage captured by ABC7’s helicopter showed one of the homes hanging off the cliffside and partially suspended in the air, while the two others appeared dangerously close to the edge.
A large dirt mound, sand and rocks now sits at the base of the cliff on a beach below the homes.
The three adjacent homes are estimated by real estate company Redfin to be worth approximately $15.9 million, $14.1 million and $12.9 million, respectively.
While experts claimed the Dana Point cliffside properties are currently safe to live in, further work will need to be carried out for them to withstand future storms.
“That’s going to need major, major work to stabilize that property,” Kyle Tourjé, executive vice president of Alpha Structural, a Los Angeles engineering firm, told the Washington Post.
“We’re seeing more damage, and I think we will continue to see more significant damage. Between back-to-back years of heavy saturation, these houses, these properties … they just can’t take this kind of beating.”
Powerful rainstorms have led to numerous landslides across Southern California this year.
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