Bluebird Canyon landslide to be revisited today

Barbara Diamond

A nightmare began on the morning of Oct. 2, 1978, for Bluebird Canyon

residents.

Forty homes were destroyed as the hillside cracked open and

dropped, snapping and popping. Miraculously, no lives were lost.

The disaster will be revisited at 7:30 p.m. today in a

presentation at the City Council chambers. Bluebird Canyon resident

Dale Ghere organized the program, which records the memories and

preserves memorabilia of the slide, including photographs

“What I remember are the sounds,” Ghere’s wife, Marilyn, said.

An earthquake or a strong wind brings it back.

“A lot of people think the slide was caused by rain -- they call

it a mudslide -- but it wasn’t,” she said. “It was hot, you know, the

way it can be in October, and had been hot for several days before

the slide. I remember because Sept. 26 is my daughter’s birthday, and

we all wore summer clothes to her birthday picnic in Bluebird Park.”

The slide came from deep within the hillside and it took a year to

repair. Repairs would have taken even longer, but a lot of red tape

was bypassed, Dale Ghere said.

“They worked 24 hours a day to get it done as quickly as possible

before the soil could give way again,” he said. “Fred Solomon was

city manager then and he was determined to reaffirm that the city’s

hillsides were safe.”

A grid of caissons, sunk deep in the hillside, protected the homes

at the top of the slide area during reconstruction below.

Earth was re-compacted and crevasses filled. Asphalt was poured

for new streets, and utilities were installed.

“I can’t speak highly enough of the Gheres,” former Police Chief

Neil Purcell said Wednesday. “I credit the results that you see in

Bluebird Canyon to him. He pushed and pushed. They are saints.”

After the hill was back in place, homeowners began to rebuild

their homes.

Mennonite volunteers helped build homes for residents who could

not qualify for the low-interest construction loans offered by the

federal government and the Federal Emergency Management Agency funded

the hillside reconstruction.

“As far as I know, it was the last landslide reconstruction the

federal government paid for,” City Manager Ken Frank said. “When we

had the Del Mar and Mystic Hills slides, FEMA gave us a portion of

the money to install pipes, but not any more. The city had to pay for

all the earthwork and reconstruction so we didn’t have pipes in

midair.”

The actual time of the 1978 slide depends on who is talking, Ghere

said.

“We have a letter from the kid who lived across the street,” he

said. “He normally got up at 5:30 a.m. to go to track practice at the

high school. He heard popping and cracking, but attributed it to

rain.”

Ghere, who woke up at about five minutes to 6 a.m., thought the

popping was big summer raindrops bouncing off the plastic patio cover

in his yard. He went out to take in the patio furniture and found it

wasn’t raining. Then he thought might be a transformer, so he told

his wife to call the police and fire departments.

Meanwhile, Ghere went out the front of his house. He could see no

fire. What he did see was the street at the top of Meadowlark Lane

drop 6 or 8 inches. Ghere dashed across the street to warn his

neighbors. They took off down the hill to alert other neighbors. He

went up the hill.

Officer Greg Bartz, now a sergeant, was on relief dispatch duty

when Marilyn Ghere called that morning. He thinks it was at 6:01 or

6:02 a.m. He immediately headed for the canyon.

When he got there, he had no idea what was going on, but he knew

it wasn’t good.

“It was pitch black, but I could hear the sound of water running

and a lot of rumbling,” Bartz said. “I though we might be having an

earthquake.

“I called the station and told them, ‘We need everybody.’”

Chief Purcell, a captain at the time, was among those who

responded.

“I was in charge of emergency services, “ Purcell said. “ At

first, it was pretty chaotic. The ground was moving. There was gas

and broken water pipes.

“Bartz and Doris Weaver [also now a sergeant] were there,” Purcell

said. “They both received awards for their conduct.

“In the initial slide, they were getting people out over a 6-inch

crack. It was a 6-foot crack by the last jump they made,” he said.

“After that, it dropped about 25 feet.”

Three days later, on Oct. 5, as police were escorting residents

back into their homes to retrieve personal items, Gov. Jerry Brown

declared Laguna Beach a disaster area. Damage was estimated at $15

million

“Unlike the fire victims [1993], we didn’t lose precious things

like our photographs,” Marilyn Ghere said. But three years passed

before Dale and Marilyn Ghere moved back into the canyon.

“It was Oct. 24, 1981 -- my birthday,” he said. “We had been

staying at a neighboring house while I was rebuilding our home. I

came back from work and the house was empty.

“What had happened is, my wife had gotten some friends to move all

the furniture into our home and had cooked me a birthday dinner

there.”

Ten years passed before the Gheres and many of their neighbors

stopped thinking of Oct. 2, 1978, as the end of an era.

“Everything was ‘Before the slide’ or After the slide,’” he said.

The Gheres’ memories and those of others, including those of the

boy who lived across the street from them, Sgt. Bartz and geologist

Iraj Poormand, will be included in “Bluebird Canyon Landslide of 1978

Reviewed,” presented tonight by the Laguna Beach Historical Society

as part of Heritage Month activities. It will be videotaped.

Admission is free. Refreshments will be served.