via www.nctimes.com

SAN DIEGO — A four-lane road buckled Wednesday and sank slowly in a hilly upscale neighborhood, destroying one home and damaging five others. No injuries were reported. […] Power lines fell, and 20 homes were evacuated — 10 on a hilltop and 10 on a street below, according to the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department. Seven people were inside the homes that were evacuated. The collapse occurred shortly before 9 a.m., leaving a ravine of crumpled pavement. Orange traffic cones and sections of big concrete pipes sat in the fissure slashing across the wide boulevard. The sinkhole in the La Jolla neighborhood of million-dollar homes cut a cone shape and was about 50 yards long and 15 feet deep, said Robert Hawk, a city engineering geologist. Six homes were damaged or destroyed and two others were in danger, but the problems appeared to be contained, he said.
Quoted from www.nctimes.com

How does A Land Slide Look?

I was wondering how looks and feels a land slide, and found the video below. Watch the video and see what happens while land mass sliding in Portland Oregon, February 1996. Horrible!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mknStAMia0Q[/youtube]

15:34 PDT SAN DIEGO, (AP) — Fire officials say they have evacuated 46 homes in the area around a landslide in the upscale La Jolla area of San Diego.

One home was destroyed as it sank into the disintegrating hillside and five others were damaged. No one was injured in the slide.

Initially only seven people were evacuated from 20 homes — 10 on the hilltop where a 50-yard-long sinkhole opened up and 10 on the street below.

Homes on a second street farther down the hill are now being vacated. Forty-two people were inside the homes that were evacuated.

City officials say they don’t know how many of those houses will be safe for residents to return to later.
Quoted from sfgate.com

UPDATE: (October 5, 2007)

Some residents return home after La Jolla landslide

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Erinn and Alton McCormick had no idea when they bought their house in June that it sat directly beneath a weak hillside. On Thursday, they found it buried up to the roofline by a wall of earth and cracked asphalt studded with pieces of curb, eucalyptus and palm tree that used to be across the street.

Residents returning to the shaken neighborhood - whether just to grab some things and take photos to show insurance adjusters or, if they were lucky, to stay for good - struggled to figure out who to blame for the landslide that took a chunk out of their La Jolla hillside a day earlier.

The collapse came just hours after engineers hired to inspect an earth slippage that was first spotted in July warned residents not to sleep in their homes because of the potential for instability.
Quoted from AOL News

What is A Landslide?

According to Wikipedia, “A landslide is a geological phenomenon which includes a wide range of ground movement, such as rock falls, deep failure of slopes and shallow debris flows. Although gravity’s action on an over-steepened slope is the primary reason for a landslide, there are other contributing factors affecting the original slope stability.” There’re human causes like machinery vibrations, traffic, (in shallow soils) the removal of deep, mining as well as natural causes like erosion by rivers, thunder and lightning, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions.

Links to Image Galleries

• Homes evacuated after landslide in La Jolla
• 111 homes evacuated as landslide wreaks havoc in La Jolla
• Aerial Images
• Ground Images

Videos:

• Sinkhole Causes Evacuations In San Diego
• Sinkhole Swallows Highway and Home
• Raw Landslide Aerials
• How Did Slide Start?

Landslide is nothing if you compare it to San Diego Fires