The Landslide Blog is written by Dave Petley, who is widely recognized as a world leader in the study and management of landslides.
California continues to suffer repeated bouts of heavy rainfall, probably associated with the El Nino conditions that have been in place through the winter. On 24 March 2024, the rainfall triggered another landslide in the Hollywood Hills area on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
Fox11 has posted a good aerial video of the site onto Youtube:-
As a consequence of the landslide, four houses have been red tagged – i.e. declared unsafe for occupation. As the video indicates, these are not small properties.
As the image above shows, the landslide appears to be a rotational block in siltstone and sandstone bedrock. This has released a large amount of weathered material from the front of the block, which has struck the houses. At the moment the main block appears not to have impacted the properties.
Reports suggest that the houses are at the 9200 block of Flicker Way, which is also shown on Google Maps as Sierra Mar Place. This is the site, I believe:-
The location appears to be [34.0793, -118.3930]. This is indicated as a landslide area on the California landslide zone map. Of course, the nightmare for the residents is that in general landslides are not insured under domestic policies, which could leave the owners of these properties with a very significant problem.
