The end of 2021/beginning fo 2022 brought a lot of rain to SoCal, and unfortunately my little slice of the Hollywood Hills didn’t fair too well. During one heavy downpour, after a few days of steady rain, a large chunk of the natural rock wall midway up my hillside decided to come down.
Here’s a before and after image of the rock wall.
The Stillwater sign ended up on one neighbor’s BMW and my other neighbor’s truck had his tire knocked off its rim by a wayward boulder. The fence, which has slowly been deteriorating, was also pretty much destroyed in places. My next door neighbor (who owns the truck) was great at making me aware of what happened, and helped clear a few things that were causing an immediate risk when I went up to see it all.
Initially, I hoped that anything that needed to be done to shore things up could also serve the greater project, but as more neighbors started reaching out to me and Stillwater (because of their sign), I knew I needed to act fast(er). The fence could not be repaired/replaced without clearing a lot of the debris, so the good people at Brian Walsh Brush Clearance, who normally clear the land for fire inspection, where able to clear or push back a lot. In fact, they ended up hauling away about two tons of dirt and rocks and were able to expose the curb at the edge of the property (never knew there was a curb).
The fence installer, SoCal Industries (who had installed the prior fence), was then able to go back in and do their work. The fence is/was never meant to be even semi-permanent – the posts are not anchored in concrete – but really just be a slight deterrent to people trying to climb the hill or dumping on it, and help hold back anything that slides down – which the prior fence did pretty well. Instead of disturbing what the old fence was still holding back, the new one was installed in front of it. Hopefully this one lasts until construction can get started.
This experience once again emphasizes things to consider when owning land you don’t live on. You’re going to have to spend – sometimes a lot – to maintain it, meet local ordinances and keep your neighbors happy. Like I stated, it would have been great to spend this money advancing the larger project – but unfortunately, time was not on my side in this instance. Also, it illustrated how slow any kind of service is happening these days – from landslide to new fence install – it took over two months to make that happen.