The Cupertino Courier

Photograph by Robert Scheer

A sliding hill threatens this home in Cupertino.

Hill slide dredges up costly dispute

Neighbors in a race with El Niño to shore up Inspiration Heights slide

By Pam Marino

Three years ago, Ron Pasari warned city officials that the hillside behind his Inspiration Heights home might come sliding down if they allowed the construction of a 4,000-square-foot house at the top.

Last January, a retaining wall at the bottom of the hill toppled after a torrential downpour. Residents watched helplessly as the hillside slid for several days toward the back of Pasari's home, wiping out his back yard and seriously damaging the house's foundation.

"It was terrifying," Pasari recalls. "My son and I had to actually evacuate."

Next-door neighbor Bob Wulff said that one night he heard a very loud snapping sound. The next morning three steel-reinforced pillars in his retaining wall were leaning forward, the hill threatening to spill toward his home of 25 years.

Pasari now lives in a two-bedroom apartment. The five-bedroom home on Mercedes Drive he lived in for nearly 10 years has been "red tagged" by the city because it is considered unsafe to occupy.

Swirling around the mountain of dirt that still sits behind Pasari's home nine months later is a controversy about what caused the slide and who is responsible for paying the $250,000 to $300,000 cost of repairing the hillside.

City officials said geologists deemed the hillside safe for construction in 1994, and a drainage system--estimated to have cost $75,000, according to records--was installed by the developer of the new house at the top of San Juan Drive. The home was completed less than a year before the landslide.

Whether it was a failure of the new home's drainage system or the failure of a retaining wall at the bottom may have to be determined in a court of law, one official said.

Pasari and his neighbors--Bob and Nancy Wulff, who live next door to Pasari and whose retaining wall was damaged; and Charles Hu and Jennifer Chang, who live in the new home on top of the hill--are repairing the hillside using loans they secured on their own. The legal agreement they worked out to repair the hillside does not allow them to discuss it publicly.

The homeowners find themselves pitted against Farmers Insurance Company, which, by coincidence, carries the policies on all three homes. The company has so far refused to pay for any of the expenses related to the slide.

"They have blamed others or the rain. They have done nothing really to resolve it," attorney Clint Johnson said last week. Johnson represents both Pasari and the Wulffs.

The company is recommending mediation, but only if the original developer of the new home on San Juan, Lotus Development and Construction, is included in the mediation. Johnson said the residents want to settle with the insurance company separately, and then sign over the litigation rights to Farmers for any action against Lotus and possibly the city.

In the meantime, a hillside repair crew is trying to beat the much-talked-about El Niño storms that are predicted to begin later this fall. About a month ago, workers started digging out the slide in order to install a new drainage system. Soil replaced on the hillside will be compacted and recompacted, and then another retaining wall will be constructed.

Building inspector Joe Antonucci said work needs to be completed before rains begin, or more trouble could result.

Had it rained any more last January, Antonucci said, the Wulffs could have found themselves out of a home, like Pasari.

"If it had kept raining another week or so we could have lost both houses," he said.

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