In a landslide-stricken town in California, life is like camping with no power, gas

RANCHO PALOS VERDES, Calif. (AP) — Nick Mardesic and his family are living off the power grid, so light at night comes from a flashlight, and a hot meal and shower require driving several miles to his parents’ home.

The family is not in a rugged location, but rather on a scenic peninsula on the edge of Los Angeles. And they aren’t off the grid by choice. Their power and gas were cut because worsening landslides from two years of heavy rain are threatening to tear apart scores of multimillion-dollar homes perched over the Pacific Ocean.

Mardesic has been fighting for months to keep his home standing. Sections of his front yard have sunk about 3.5 feet (1 meter). Deep fissures snake across the walls of his house and a piece of dry wall fell from his ceiling. The sidewalk and one end of his driveway have caved, creating a gaping hole that has exposed an underground water pipe. His bedroom is on the verge of collapse, he said, so he has been placing wood on a beam under the house and jacks it up. In the past five months, he has spent about $50,000 to keep his home elevated.

“It’s something you see out of a movie,” he said outside the home he shares with his wife and two children, ages 3 and 1. “It’s almost unbelievable … just watching your house sink away.”

The landslides are the latest catastrophe in California, already burdened by worsening wildfires and extreme weather that has swung from heat waves to torrential rains that have caused flooding and mudslides in the past year.

In Rancho Palos Verdes, entire homes have collapsed or been torn apart. Walls have shifted and large fissures have appeared on the ground. Evacuation warnings are in effect and swaths of the community have had their power and gas turned off. Gas