Weeks after homes in the Portuguese Bend neighborhood of Rancho Palos Verdes lost gas due to dangerous landslides, Southern California Edison officials have dealt another blow to those living in the worsening mudslide complex: Power will be cut off at noon Sunday.
Residents of 140 homes, as well as some nearby municipal facilities powered by the utility, will have their power lines disconnected indefinitely, said David Eisenhauer, a spokesman for SoCal Edison.
“The ground is just too unstable,” he said. “It has become too dangerous for us to continue to provide electricity.”
Rancho Palos Verdes issued an evacuation warning for the Portuguese Bend area shortly after 3 p.m. Saturday, citing an imminent power outage. It said residents in the area should not use water or plumbing after the power goes out, as it could “lead to a sewage spill.”
Recently, land movements have continued to be recorded in this area at an unprecedented rate: up to 30 centimeters per week. This has created increasing challenges for residents, first responders, municipal authorities and utilities as infrastructure damage and safety concerns escalate.
The homes that will be without power were notified of the outage on Saturday. These residents are the same ones who had their gas service cut off nearly a month ago.
Portuguese Bend resident Mike Hong said Saturday he didn’t learn about the impending water shutoff until an hour earlier.
“They’re giving us even less time than the gas company,” said Hong, who cooks on hot plates, an option that ends Sunday. “Don’t abandon us. Where’s the humanity in this?”
SoCal Edison warned residents that this situation was possible after the gas was shut off. Eisenhauer said there was no specific reason for the decision, but it was made to “ensure the safety of the community.”
On Thursday, a small fire broke out near Narcissa Drive in Portuguese Bend. Eisenhauer said it started after a downed power line ignited surrounding vegetation. Although the fire was quickly extinguished, he said the incident demonstrated the perilous state of the situation.
“We know this is a difficult time for Rancho Palos Verdes and we are looking at ways to keep the power flowing,” Eisenhauer said. “At this point, the ground movement has created such a dangerous situation that we have to make the difficult decision to shut off the power indefinitely.”
Eisenhauer said there were no immediate plans to extend the power outage to nearby neighborhoods also facing landslides, but said it was a fluid situation that the utility is “constantly monitoring.”
He said SoCal Edison will have a “community team vehicle” in the neighborhood by Sunday with water and information for residents. He added that the utility is not providing generators because the ground is not stable enough to install them.
It’s not yet clear how the power outage would affect life in the area more broadly, beyond electricity to private residences, but Rancho Palos Verdes officials have previously said that “a power outage would be detrimental to the entire community.”
City officials said the loss of power would create new safety concerns because electricity is essential for telecommunications lines, the sewer system and the fleet of pumps that help mitigate ongoing ground movements by expelling groundwater that geologists say is causing them.
City officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Officials with the California Water Service, which supplies the region with water, have said they have no plans to interrupt service, but it’s unclear whether that has changed in recent days.
