The Brief

On a beautiful July day earlier this year, out of the blue, catastrophe visited residents of Rolling Hills Estates on the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

It’d been about four months since the last heavy rains, but the precipitation from one of the wettest years on record appears to have been working its way deep into the earth.

It appears that raindrops percolated through the silt and sand and past deposits of volcanic ash in the Altamira Shale, before settling on layers of montmorillonite rich clays, lifted from the ocean during the Pliocene some three million years ago.

An aerial view of upscale homes destroyed by a landslide on Palos Verdes Peninsula in July, 2023.

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It's possible that the particles of clay then took on the water, compromising the ability of the earth beneath the homes to stick together, leading them to separate like an unevenly stacked layer cake. The constituent parts of the neighborhood – the homes, streets and sewer – began to move, pulled by gravity down an embankment into the canyon below.

A preliminary report compiled for the city of Rolling Hills Estates by the geotechnical firm GeoKinetics said that a "high level of precipitation" was likely the main factor behind the slope failure. Though, it should be noted, other inquiries are ongoing.

If you know a bit about the area, landslides should come as little surprise, especially considering there are roughly 150 others that've have been documented there.

A view of upscale homes destroyed by a landslide on Palos Verdes Peninsula in July 2023.

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“Is the geology conducive to land sliding along the Palos Verdes Peninsula? The answer is yes,” said Jeremy Lancaster, state geologist and director of the California Geological Survey.

Given that another year of heavy rain might be on the way, influenced by a strong El Niño, what are the odds we’ll see even more homes sliding into canyons below?

Can we predict landslides?

There are two key types of landslides that you should be aware of: shallow and deep seated landslides.

The one's I'm usually on LAist screaming about are the shallow ones, particularly in hilly areas that've just burned. They're a bit more predictable because we know that after a fire, hillsides are covered in a waxy, water repelling layer and have had most of their vegetation removed. So, when rain falls from the sky, there's not much to slow it down, keep it from knocking dirt loose, picking up speed and turning into a huge destructive wall of water, like what we saw in Montecito in 2018.

When reporting on landslide risk during major storms, I'm usually on the lookout for recently burned areas anticipated to receive an inch of rain per hour, because heavy rainfall makes the shallow slides more likely.

Debris from a mudslide covers a home on January 10, 2018 in Montecito, California.

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Deep–seated landslides, like what we often see in the Palos Verdes Peninsula are a whole other beast,

We know that they typically need three things to occur: steep slopes, weak rocks and some sort of triggering mechanism, such as earthquakes or water (the peninsula has all three), to get them going.

But unless there's apparent movement on the surface, they're terribly difficult to anticipate because it's unclear what's going on deep in the ground. As soon as you're dealing with layer upon layer of material from different epochs all stacked upon each other, things get much more complex.

All it takes is one weak layer of water loving clay to give out between a whole bunch of big strong rock, for a whole hillside to come down.

Terrifyingly, a deep slide can occur months after a rainy season ends because it can take water a long time to slowly percolate through the earth to get to one of those weak layers.

"Because these landslides are at greater depths, it's really difficult geologically to have precise controls on when and how exactly that motion starts. But generally we expect that an above average rainfall seasons, particularly ones that are back to back, the probability or likelihood of motion is there," said Matthew Thomas, a research hydrologist with the USGS landslide hazards program.

It can take many cycles of wetting and drying for one of those weaker layers to become a problem.

Take for instance, bentonite clay found throughout the peninsula. According to Lancaster, while the clay is quite strong when it's dry, when it's wet it weakens and expands slightly, allowing for a slight amount of creep. Over time, cracks can grow and fill with water, further jeopardizing the hill structure. Add a whole bunch of weight and steep slopes and things can destabilize over time.

So if you can't predict a slide, what's there to look out for?

Listen for creaks and groans, look for evidence of movement, including broken water pipes and growing cracks.

It’s not always rain that’s responsible. Broken sewer or irrigation lines can also compromise layers and add weight to a hillside and cause it to give out.

Workers search for victims of a mudslide that left four people dead and 20 missing January 11, 2005 in La Conchita, California.

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What risk does El Niño bring?

El Niño is sometimes linked to wetter winters here in Southern California, which means more opportunity for water to percolate deep underground and destabilize hillsides.

There’s no guarantee that slides will follow a heavy rain year, but it does increase the risk that one will happen, especially in areas that’ve already seen slides, or have active slides ongoing.

According to the preliminary report prepared for the city, there were no earlier slides detected where the July 8 slide occurred in the Rolling Hills Estates area.

What can be done?

Preventing the percolation of water deep into the soil is key. Good surface drainage is an important. Concrete can be used to fill cracks that open up to prevent further infiltration. And in places like Abalone Cove, they've also installed dewatering wells, which actively pump water out.

At the behest of the city of Rolling Hills Estates, the homeowners association began winterization work in November, according to a letter provided by Assistant City Manager Alexa Davis. It includes various measures meant to clear water away from vulnerable parts of the hillside, including temporary drainage, grading and sandbags.

If you’re nervous about your property, you need to be on the lookout for growing cracks and listening for sounds of the earth moving. If your doors have suddenly fallen out of plumb and your windows aren’t opening, you may be facing a catastrophic issue.

If it’s not an emergency, but you're curious about what's going on beneath your home, hire an engineer to look at the geotechnical report relevant to your property.

On Friday, Southern California Edison filed lawsuits against Los Angeles County and several other agencies over their alleged roles in the Eaton Fire.

Two lawsuits were filed.

In one suit, the utility company alleges Southern California Gas delayed shutting off gas in the burn area for several days after the fire, making the blaze worse.

“SoCalGas’ design and actions caused gas leaks, gas fires, reignition of fires, gas explosions and secondary ignitions during the critical early stages of the Eaton Fire,” according to the suit.

The claim goes on to say this contributed to the spread of the fire and made firefighting and evacuation efforts more difficult.

In the second suit, the utility company alleges the Eaton Fire was made worse by the local government response, “including due to the failures of LASD, LACoFD, OEM and GENASYS in issuing timely evacuation alerts and notifications,” the claim reads.

The same filing says L.A. County was to blame for vegetation and overgrown brush in the Eaton Canyon area that fueled the blaze.

It also named the city of Pasadena and its utility system, Pasadena Water and Power, the city of Sierra Madre, Kinneloa Irrigation District, Rubio Cañon Land & Water Association, Las Flores Water Company and Lincoln Avenue Water Company as parties responsible for water systems running dry in Altadena as the fire broke out.

Edison says hydrants running dry compounded the extent of the disaster.

Those claims will be heard in the L.A. County Superior Court, which is also handling L.A. County’s lawsuit against SoCal Edison.

Edison itself is the subject of hundreds of lawsuits from survivors of the Eaton Fire, which could cost the company billions of dollars in settlements.

Edison has said its equipment likely sparked the Eaton Fire and filed these suits, in part, because it believes these various entities should share some of the blame for the disaster, which resulted in the destruction of thousands of buildings and the deaths of 19 people.

A compensation program Edison established for fire survivors who forgo suing the company has made settlement offers to more than 80 of those who applied.

A new organization is taking over production of the MLK Day Parade, almost 40 years after the first parade was held in South L.A. to commemorate the civil rights leader.

Bakewell Media, publisher of the Los Angeles Sentinel newspaper (a partner of The LA Local), was granted the permit in September to organize the parade for the first time by the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners. Formerly called the Kingdom Day Parade, the parade has been rebranded as the Los Angeles Official Martin Luther King Day Parade. The parade was previously produced and organized by Adrian Dove and the L.A. chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality California (CORE-CA).

With less than a week before the parade kicks off, LA Local reporter LaMonica Peters sat down with Danny Bakewell Jr., president and executive editor of the LA Sentinel, to discuss the details and what attendees should expect.

This Jan. 12 interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Why did you decide to produce the MLK Day Parade this year?

Bakewell: It all started because Adrian Dove, who was the previous promoter, had announced that he was retiring. When he announced he was retiring, LAPD, city council offices and other people said, “Hey, we still want to do the MLK Day parade. Would you guys be interested? You have the infrastructure to put it together.” And we said yes.

What’s different about this year’s production?

We’re going to start the parade with a singer performing “Lift Every Voice.” We’re going to play the message from Bernice King at the start of the show. Obviously, we have Cedric the Entertainer as our grand marshal to add the entertainment value, but the community has always been and will continue to be a major part of this parade.

Is ABC 7 covering the parade this year? 

It’s still going to be televised by ABC. We’re working diligently on how the show is going to be, but ABC has been a great partner.

What was the preparation for this parade?

Thanks to our corporate sponsors, we have a number of bands. The truth is, particularly in LAUSD at this time, and other school districts, they don’t have the funding to just get a bus and get here. I can’t say enough about Airbnb to Bank of America, all of our corporate sponsors, who are supporting all of the youth organizations.

Were there any unexpected challenges while preparing for this parade? 

This [The LA Sentinel office on Crenshaw Blvd.] is usually our command center during The Taste of Soul. It dawned on me last week that we’re going to be a mile away [from the parade route]. So, we made the decision to bring in a trailer to be our office at the corner of King and Crenshaw boulevards.

Any special guests this year besides the grand marshal?

I’m working on a surprise guest to be the singer for the national anthem. No matter what, we will give tribute to the Black national anthem “Lift Every Voice” as loud as we can next Monday.

What’s the long-term vision for this parade, if Bakewell Media continues to produce it?

We see the MLK Day Parade, and we want the world to see and expect to see this parade, the same way they see the Macy’s Parade, the Hollywood Parade or the Rose Parade. BET has come in this year as a partner. So there’s an opportunity to possibly do a national broadcast on BET. Not that we would lose our local television, but we see this as a major parade in this community and in the national African American community, celebrating the great work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. So, we are very excited.

Bits of conversation drift out of Aladdin Used Books as people lined up at the register with stacks of books.

The bustle of activity is bittersweet as the Koreatown bookstore will close its doors at the end of January after 13 years in the neighborhood.

Jina Lee, store manager, said declining sales at the Koreatown branch led to the decision to close the store. In recent years, staffing at the 5,000-square-foot store on the third floor of Madang Mall dropped from six to two, Lee said.

“This was a happy place for everyone,” she said, “but we were struggling.”

On a recent January afternoon, the shop looked lively as customers took advantage of the clearance sale on Korean and English books, CDs, DVDs and other media.

Koreatown resident Jin Lee wishes he visited the bookstore more often.

“It would have been great if it had been this crowded all the time,” Lee said. “But nowadays, people don’t read paper books and prefer devices, so it’s hard for all bookstores.”

Some customers traveled from as far as Orange County and the Inland Empire to visit one last time.

Minjung Kim, who moved from Koreatown to Fullerton five years ago, still made trips to the bookstore after she moved away.

“It’s the only place that sells this many new and used Korean books,” she said.

Each visit to the bookstore was important to David Artiga of Pomona, because it gave him a chance to connect with friends over literature.

“I feel like this is really negative for the community,” he said. “The importance of having a well-versed society, keeping in touch with literature and art is so important. And now this place is just going to be gone.”

South Korea-based Aladdin Used Books opened its first U.S. brick-and-mortar store in Los Angeles in 2013. The store carries around 50,000 new and used books, with a majority in Korean.

Customers will still be able to order books through Aladdin’s website after the store closes.

Ken Derick, a Koreatown resident, walked around the store aisles with a stack of books.

“It’s like we’re kind of moving towards a new technology, like everything’s virtual and online,” he said.

Longtime customer Anthony Kim said he’s enjoyed looking for gems in the English-language shelves.

“My Korean ability is rather limited but I’ve always enjoyed browsing their English language sections,” he said. “And now that I have a niece and nephew, their children’s book section has always been a great place to pick up new books for them.”

Valerie Laguna perused the shop’s CD section, a bygone experience in the era of streaming.

“I really like their CD collection and their literature collection they have in English,” she said.

“I was so sad about it, I immediately texted my friend,” she said. “I’ve gotten so many of my favorite books and my favorite CDs from this place. I feel like losing a place like this is just so sad and makes a huge dent in the community and culture.”

Less than a mile away on Western Avenue, Happy Bookstore owner Jung Jae-seung said it has been difficult for bookstores for some time now. His Korean-language bookstore is also struggling in an era when so many people have abandoned print media.

“It’s really about how long printed books can survive,” Jung said. “From that point of view, it’s hard to be optimistic.”

South L.A. or South Central? More than 20 years ago, that question came with high emotions for some residents who were sick of the stereotypes they saw in media coverage of their neighborhoods.

So in 2003, the Los Angeles City Council renamed the collection of communities south of the 10 freeway in an attempt to cut ties with the connotations of poverty and crime that some believe came to represent South Central after the turbulence of the 1980s and ‘90s. Today, you see South L.A. on official documents, maps and even historical and cultural districts.

Even though city officials moved to wipe away the old name, some locals never stopped calling the area South Central — a name that for them represents history, resilience and Black and Latino culture.

“I think it will always be South Central for its residents and for the people that were born and raised here,” said Evelyn Alfaro-Macias, a social worker who was raised in Historic South Central and whose office is on Hoover Street. “It means home. It means culture. People should respect the name South Central.”

What and where is South LA, anyway?

By the early 2000s, television news and pop culture had given South Central a reputation for violence and chaos that some were eager to shake.

Helen Johnson, a resident of Vermont Square, helped lead the campaign to change the name.

“I think the media can make you or either break you,” 72-year-old Johnson told reporters in 2003 after the city council approved the name change, according to the L.A. Times. “This is what you’ve done to us. You’ve broke us.”

Supporters of the change included then-Councilmember Janice Hahn, who is now a county supervisor and said at the time that the South Central name had become “mostly derogatory.”

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who was working then as executive director of the nonprofit Community Coalition, said the area’s image problem wasn’t just about its name.

“If the media paid a little more attention to covering positive things in the community, that will also help,” Bass said, according to an L.A. Times report.

The LA Local has reached out Bass and Hahn’s offices, as well as L.A. City Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson.

The exact borders of South Los Angeles, or the area formerly known as South Central, are fuzzy.

The South Central name originally only applied to the neighborhood around Central Avenue south of downtown Los Angeles, but it spread west as populations grew.

City planning documents today designate a strip of neighborhoods between Interstate 110 and Arlington Avenue as South Los Angeles and tag the Central Avenue neighborhood as Historic South Central. Others, including academics and the city tourism board, use a map of South Los Angeles that stretches to the border of Culver City.

This is what the community told us

Some businesses in the area adopted the South L.A. name, notably South LA Cafe, the coffee shop that has grown to five locations and become a local institution.

More recently, some groups have made a concerted effort to embrace South Central, like the South Central Run Club or South Central Clips, an Instagram-based group that sells skatewear-inspired “South Central” apparel. (Even South LA Cafe today sells some merch with the South Central name.)

Several locals told The LA Local the official designation never changed anything for them.

“It’s South Central for me. That’s where my roots are,” April Brown said. “When you go anywhere across the country, across the world and you say South Central, they know exactly what you’re talking about.”

To Emily Amador, the name change erases the history of South Central, including “the Black migration that occurred, redlining that created what we know today to be South Central and the demographics, which are here today, which is Black and brown and undocumented.”

Ulysses Alfaro, who was born and raised in the Historic South Central neighborhood, said he uses South L.A. with people from out of town but South Central with locals.

South L.A. is a geographic designator, he said, but he considers South Central to be an identity: “That’s where the grinders are, the hard-working people that work their butts off, their asses off. The ones that keep the city running.”