The failing bluffs along the Pacifica Shoreline led city officials to declare a third apartment building uninhabitable. Council members are already dealing with their own list of damaged properties, having declared a state emergency in an effort to obtain state and federal money to fix its pier and sea wall, which is estimated to cost in the millions. They join several other nearby homes and apartment buildings abandoned in past years.
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“Cavities in the bluff are forming to the south, west and north of the building, and these critically over-steepened slopes are anticipated to fall back…in the next several days”, Cully told the Chronicle.
Rains have inundated the northern Californian city of Pacifica, eroding the cliffs and leaving oceanfront apartment buildings in danger of falling into the Pacific Ocean.
Since December, city officials say storms have damaged the pier, the Milagra Watershed Outfall and caused a sea wall to fail.
In April 2010, the apartments at 320 Esplanade were deemed unstable as well and the owners had to come up with a fix plan to keep the buildings from being demolished. During the last major El Niño in 1998, the cliffs eroded and one home fell into the ocean.
The city on Friday declared a state of emergency, which frees up funds to help fix damaged infrastructure.
Wet El Nino weather has caused unsafe cliff erosion along the California coastline, prompting a state of emergency.
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Residents from the 20 apartments are only allowed to remove their belongings and access is now limited to just that activity, according to a press release from the city manager’s office.
