Family Forced to Flee as Slide Buries Backyard

VENTURA — Nedra McCarter said she used to think that earthquakes were scary. That was until she looked out the kitchen window of her Aliso Place home Wednesday morning and saw the hillside in the backyard crashing down toward her.

“It was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” she said.

McCarter was doing the dishes at 9 a.m. when she heard a giant roar behind the house as the hillside gave way.

“I thought at first it was hail on the fiberglass patio roof,” she said. “Then I heard trees cracking, and then I looked up and a fence was going by my dining room window.”

The thought of losing the house that she and her husband, Johnny, have lived in for 27 years sent her into shock.

Dirt, rocks and mud rumbled down the hillside, toppling trees, burying redwood patio furniture and knocking over a picket fence.

The shifting rubble also destroyed a rose garden, pine tree and buried an avocado tree before coming to rest against the stucco wall of their family room.

Ventura firefighters arrived and determined that water coming from an irrigation pipe in an orchard above the McCarters’ property was the probable cause of the slide, Battalion Chief Kevin Rennie said.

Firefighters began moving furniture out of the family room in case the tons of debris crashed through the wall.

As the slide inched toward the house, firefighters boarded up windows, hoping to protect the property from the dirt and debris.

By 3 p.m., another 3 feet of backyard had been buried in muck and the house had been declared off-limits.

Movers were called in to take away the remainder of the McCarters’ belongings, and Nedra and Johnny were making plans on where to spend the night.

“Our house has been red-tagged by the city,” she said. “I think we’ll stay at the Pierpont Inn.”

Said her husband: “I just keep my fingers crossed that it doesn’t all come down.”

Authorities are not sure if the McCarters will be able to return to their home. A geologist spent much of Wednesday afternoon surveying the hillside to measure its stability.

In October, they were among many hillside families near downtown Ventura whose homes were threatened by a fire started by an arsonist.

Aliso Place is a cul-de-sac off Aliso Street and as the fire was pushed along by high winds, officials feared that the area would suffer great property loss.

But garden hose-toting residents and an unexpected cloudburst kept the fire contained to dry scrub and trees.

“I think this was a lot worse than the fire because this happened so fast,” Nedra McCarter said. “It was such a shock to me, such an uneasy feeling.”