SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News
POSTED: 04/12/2014 05:45:30 PM PDT
By Lisa M. Krieger
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“BEN LOMOND — No one foresaw the collapsing hillside that killed 10 people along the Santa Cruz Mountains’ Love Creek in 1982. Four people still lie buried there, never to be found.
But no one knows better than Santa Cruz geologist Gerald Weber that predicting landslides is a perilously imprecise science. Three decades later, with Washington state’s tragic mudslide rekindling memories, Weber is still torn by a decision he made that changed so many lives.
Worried — perhaps needlessly — about the Love Creek hillside’s continued threat to 28 families, officials ordered them to abandon and raze their beloved homes.
A generation later, despite rainy winters and the nearby Loma Prieta earthquake, the mountain slipped several more feet — but then stopped.
