Landslide in Laguna Beach, Calif., sends homes crashing down hill, injures 2 people

LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. -- A landslide sent at least 12 expensive homes crashing down a hill early Wednesday and damaged 15 others in this coastal Orange County enclave.\nAt least three people were taken to a hospital for minor injuries, officials said. Crews were apparently able to evacuate most of the residents before the earth gave way.\n"The pipes started making funny noises and the toilet sounded like it was about to explode," Carrie Joyce, a fire department office manager who lives in the neighborhood, some 50 miles southeast of Los Angeles.\n"I could see one house, huge, we call it the mausoleum, 5,000 square feet or more. It had buckled, the retaining wall in the front of it was cracked. It just looked like the whole house was going," she said.\nLaguna Beach, its shoreline dotted with coves and tide pools, has some of Southern California's most desired real estate, but it has also grappled with fires and mudslides over the years. Wednesday's slide came on the heels of a near-record winter rainy season.\nThe damaged homes, located in an area called Blue Bird Canyon about 15 blocks from the ocean, are worth about $1.75 million each, which the mayor described as "average" for the area.\nTwelve homes were lost and 15 damaged, Mayor Elizabeth Pearson-Schneider said. Forty more homes were evacuated.\nMultistory homes came to rest at odd angles, some nearly intact, others broken apart and trailing debris. Around the edges of the gash at the top of the hill, several homes jutted out with no earth below parts of their foundations.\nOne house, snapped in two, had an American flag fluttering from a balcony. An unearthed road simply stopped in midair, beneath it a tangle of debris. Trees, cars and roadway also spilled down.\n"We believe we evacuated the people who could be in harm's way," Pearson-Schneider said.\n"My understanding is that we received a phone call from a couple that began feeling slippage. They were quite upset, as you could imagine, and we just told them to get out," he said. People began reporting problems around 5 a.m. and the hillside gave way between 6 and 7 a.m.\nOne man, clutching his cat, said his home looked "like it buckled in the middle and broke in half. We ran from the house. It started coming down."\nTwo injured children were admitted to South Coast Medical Center in Laguna Beach in good condition, hospital spokeswoman Maggie Baumann said. A third person there, a 71-year-old woman whose house was destroyed, wasn't injured in the landslide but appeared to be under emotional stress, she said.\nThe neighborhoods have been hit before by flooding, mudslides and wildfire. Several homes were red-tagged as uninhabitable in February during the second rainiest season on record in Southern California.