While crews on Mount Soledad begin the demolition process on three homes damaged by an Oct. 3 landslide and homeowners continue with their investigations, City Attorney Michael Aguirre has posted a detailed interim report documenting events preceding the slope’s movement.
Included in Aguirre’s report are documents, correspondence and a timeline of events beginning in June showing work orders issued by various city departments for water, sewer and gas leaks.
“As the mayor said in a press conference, all information was released to ensure transparency in government,” said Kevin Christensen, investigator for the City Attorney’s office and primary author of the report. “We felt releasing 1,000 pages of documents was an empty statement. We wanted to put them in order to show people how the city handled the situation.”
The City Attorney also claimed the City Council acted against its charter when it removed him from the Mount Soledad case and hired an outside attorney.
“We want the mayor to abide by the city charter,” Aguirre said. “We are the lead attorneys for the city “” that is my duty. We’ll work with the other attorneys; I don’t want to get in a fight, because that would jeopardize the city.”
“The council alleged that [Aguirre] exposed the city to liability,” Christensen said. “But hiring outside counsel to handle outside cases filed against the city is a contravention against city charter.”
“We just want to move forward,” Aguirre said.
According to Christensen, the mayor’s office alleged that the City Attorney exposed the city to liability on Oct. 3, the day of the landslide, when he announced water crews had been working on the streets previously. This report lists e-mails and water department documents that show foreknowledge of leaks and street movement by high-ranking city officials in the mayor’s office and members of the City Council.
On June 8, the water department issued the first work order for 6186 Soledad Mountain Road for damaged water pipes, four other incidents of water leaks on that same segment of road were documented during the month.
In July, crews were sent to respond to more leaks on the mountain over nine days. The report lists subsequent e-mails and other correspondence between city officials and homeowners worried about the degradation of their houses and sinking of the street.
On Aug. 3, city workers wrote “renewed repair is leaking badly/sinking…need to fix it today.” According to the City Attorney’s report, every worker sent to repair the street wrote a similar summation.
Three days after the city fixed the Aug. 3 leak, the road began leaking again. After visiting the site, Water Ops Division Deputy Director Jim Fisher concluded the crews failed to repair the leak properly but that nothing in the street had changed. City geologist Rob Hawk agreed, but he asked to be notified of any future leaks, the report states.
Then, in mid-August, “The city issued a series of three work orders to repair a leaking water main … All three work orders described the problem as ‘Seeping thru crack in strt (street).’ The language in the work orders became more alarming as time passed,” the City Attorney reported.
After many August leaks, the city ordered studies of the street and subdued many homeowners’ fears.
Starting the first week of September, the street began leaking again, and high-ranking city officials started scrambling to find a solution. Most documents were released, but on Sept. 17, Mayor Jerry Sanders held a morning meeting from which no notes were released, the city attorney reported.
“Shortly after the meeting, e-mails circulated that sought input on a letter that was going to be sent to residents of Soledad Mountain Road, Desert View Drive and additional areas that could be impacted,” the city attorney said.
The letter would outline a plan to shut down the water main and install pipe aboveground.
In addition to precautionary measures such as reducing heavy truck traffic, Hawk sought additional geotechnical advice from Helenschmidt Geotechnical. Although the firm gave a detailed report of needed work to be done, which included an emergency plan, “the project, however, could not move forward because of lack of funding.”
Then, just before the landslide, the city’s Engineering and Capital Improvements Department received $250,000 in funds for the geotechnical firm.
The hillside actually began “opening” Sept. 28, the report stated.
“At 5714 Soledad Mountain Road where the curb meets the street, a small crack has opened up and runoff is seeping into the ground,” wrote Michael Handal, associate engineer for Engineering and Capital Projects. “SDG&E worked all night on a gas leak at 5714 Soledad Mountain Road. Please seal the crack ASAP.”
The next day, a fire hydrant began leaking and the city was alerted that the street was moving in the 5700 block of Desert View Drive, the report said.
Then, another sinking patch of Soledad Mountain Road was reported Oct. 2, and the city began working on warning letters for the residents. At this time, Hawk urged officials to “evaluate the overhead again [because] several residences have had concerns,” Hawk wrote in an e-mail to an SDG&E representative.
The city issued another work order Oct. 3 for a leak at Desert View Drive for “lifting asphalt” and described the scene as “…still leaking, & ground moving.”
Before the slide, residents reported water running to gutters. Then at 9:03 a.m., the land began sliding.
Most insurance policies don’t cover landslides, so many of the affected homeowners have sought their own counsel. Attorneys for the homeowners have hired experts to launch an investigation into whether or not the city is at fault for the Oct. 3 landslide.
“There are things in these documents we have found that are leading us down other paths of confirmation and investigation,” said Craig R. McClellan, attorney for Homeowners on Soledad.
For one thing, when the city was fixing one water leak, workers may have damaged the sewer system, McClellan said.
The current investigation involves the water main. The next step will be to inspect the sewer system.
Although none of McClellan’s 13 to 18 clients are included in the demolition process, all fall into one of three categories depending on the amount of damages they suffered. Some homes have structural damage and their owners are displaced; other owners are in homes with a lot less value now; and other homes are yellow-tagged but don’t have a lot of damage.
“Ideally they’ll all be made whole again,” he said. “They’ll be compensated for all their losses.”