Retiree’s life upended by Rancho Palos Verdes landslide: ‘We got snake bit’

From Sallie Reeves’ backyard in Rancho Palos Verdes, you can see Catalina Island on a clear day. You can also spot whales in the Pacific Ocean, neighborhood peacocks and red-tailed hawks.

It’s the type of idyllic retirement the 82-year-old envisioned when she moved into her ranch-style home in the Portuguese Bend area in 1982. But she has had to rethink what her retirement looks like after a 6-foot fissure developed through her property. It’s a predicament dozens of Rancho Palos Verdes residents have had to grapple with as their properties also slowly rip apart.

Reeves lives in an area of the city that sits on an ancient landslide. Movement was minimal for decades. But above average rainfall in 2022 and 2023 set off a rapid increase in land movement, which prompted Southern California Edison and SoCalGas to shut off utilities for hundreds of residents, including Reeves.

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Her three-bedroom, two-bath home is now a hollowed out shell, raised from the slab on wooden platforms. The only thing that remains intact are some of the walls, beams and floor to ceiling windows. It’s now red tagged as she awaits a FEMA buyout.

“We got snake bit, that’s all,” she said, adding that the damage to some of her neighbors’ homes is much worse.

Reeves has since had to downsize. She now lives in a converted garage, with a modest bathroom, a bedroom and a living space that also doubles as a dining area and kitchen. Her furniture has been distributed to her nieces and nephews, and most of her belongings are in storage, packed into containers parked on her driveway.

“ I can live here a long time. We've got a full bath, and we don't have cupboards or anything, so it's pretty ugly looking at it, but I'm functioning just fine,” she said about her new home.

When things started going from bad to worse

When Reeves moved into her home in the '80s, land movement wasn’t a concern. She used to be able to walk to the bottom of the canyon behind her home. Now, that’s all washed away and it’s a 30-foot drop.

Storms at the end of 2022 leading into 2023 were the turning point.

 ”We just started noticing thresholds coming apart, cracks here and there,” she said.

And pretty soon it wasn’t just a crack in the bedroom wall.

“One night we had animals come in through the walls,” Reeves said, describing how the bedroom wall separated from the home during a storm, “It was like the fire hose was right on our bed.”

There was no room for a washer in Sallie Reeves' converted garage, so she uses it outside.

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In response to wildlife incursions, they decided to convert the garage. It was a 33-day process.

A reluctant buyout applicant 

In 2024, Rancho Palos Verdes announced a buyout program — with the help of federal funds — for residents whose homes were made inhabitable by land movement.

Reeves was a reluctant applicant.

 ”Tearfully, I went to the city and filled out the application on the very last day, down to the last hour,” she said.

She still doesn’t know if she’ll accept the buyout money: Doing so will mean she has to move and the property will be converted to open space.

It could take years before she has to make that decision, so the two-time breast cancer survivor spends some of her time raising money for the disease and enrolling in 60-mile walks across the country to raise awareness for breast cancer. The rest of the time, she tends to her native plants and spends time with her dogs.

Where Sallie Reeves spends time gardening.

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Yusra Farzan

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LAist

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“ I think half the world thinks that I am bat shit crazy, and you gotta be a little that way. But I've been privileged in the sense that I know how valuable this is to me,” Reeves said.