What Happened

It was a dark and stormy day – literally. March 14 (Pi Day) was the 14th atmospheric river storm (constant steady drenching rain) of this extraordinary season. We’d been in a severe drought for years and suddenly – a deluge. The earth wasn’t prepared for this. The water soaked the topsoil, drenched it and got in between the top 4-5 feet of soil and the substratum – which is a clay-ish layer called the Franciscan, virtually impenetrable.

The wind was whipping the trees around like mad. Some kind of vortex was activated. I, however, was snugly comfortable sitting inside with the heat and light and music on (Arvo Pärt, I believe) when I heard a loud crack. Oh, there’s goes a tree, I thought and glanced over to see a quarter of our tall hill break off and slide down the hill in a single “stream”. The trees just slid down with the topsoil, remaining upright until they hit the creek. Fortunately, our creek is a 15-20 foot drop and most of the trees hit it and fell to one side or another. A few hit our house but not with their full force or weight. The sound was indescribable – like a very loud bowling alley combined with horrible deep crunching and cracking sounds. It brought dozens of neighbors out – all mortified. We live in the WUI (Wildlife Urban Interface) and we pay the price in concern over natural disasters. We think it’s made up for by peace & quiet & beauty but this certainly rocked our world. One big strong guy who wound up helping us a lot later admitted to “running away” after he saw what was happening.

This happened three more times over the course of the day from 11AM to about 5PM. Three more quarters of a big hill broke off and did the same thing – but each time got a little closer and more dangerous as the angle of the topography tipped more trees in our direction. Plus, by that time, the creek was filled with two tons of topsoil and dozens of trees. The last event was a doozy. A fine and friendly neighbor came over with a chain saw during a break in the action and we had just trimmed off a branch that was pressing on and gradually shattering a window when we both heard a very loud crack and looked over to see a huge bay tree topple right towards us. I’ve heard about the suddenness of that type of event but to witness it as a “target” was pretty affecting. We would have been creamed if we were not under the top deck, which took the brunt of the hit – losing a big chunk of the handrails. What I witnessed after the loud crack was a short period of time where the tree started leaning towards us and then a very fast gravitationally-enhanced fall. Once the weight of these massive trees shifts and gravity takes over, you can’t believe how fast and hard they fall.

To give you a sense of what we started with, here's some (partial) pictures of our hillside. In all the time we lived here, we never thought to take just a full-on shot of the hillside with the trees, but you can catch some pretty good glimpses in these shots. It was a thick and untouched forest that had grown up over a long, long time. It was lovely and we didn't give it much thought besides appreciating it, esp. in the moonlight.

Here's some shots in the aftermath, just a few hours into the event. We didn't think to take "parallel" shots out of the same windows as the pre-event pictures above. That would really illustrate the change, but I'm sure you'll get the idea from these:

The massive amount of topsoil that fell filled up our creek and we got concerned about flooding. Also, we needed to remove all the trees that had hit the house ASAP.

The sight of these huge bay trees being twisted and rolled around and falling pell-mell was something to behold. It’s almost as if I shouldn’t have seen it. It’s like my first earthquake out here – for a time my body couldn’t accept the fact that the earth can act like a liquid, with perceivable waves. This was like witnessing four train wrecks – all of them heading towards us. During the day, I was Mr. Cool & Calm – dealing with the neighbors and trying to figure out what to do next – but after the storm subsided and the neighbors left, I started shaking. As a performer, I know adrenaline and this was a burst of it. Shortly after, I became very nauseous and found myself retching. In the next couple months, I learned about PTSD, which I’d only read about. It’s what they say – everything could be going well, a sunny day, hanging with friends, etc. – and suddenly a very vivid flashback and that a sickening feeling of fear and something else (dread?) comes over your body and overwhelms you in the moment. Because it’s privately experienced it’s hard to describe but it is definitely real. Stress and dread can affect you physically, of course, and I then caught a horrible case of bronchitis which would not go away. It was a rough period.

The day of the event, I reached out for help and found a great tree company that actually does a lot of work for our HOA. He and his crew were available the next day and showed up in force. You can see a couple blue-capped, green-shirted tree guys in these pics.

It took them 5 days and cost me $30K but they managed to clear out 40+ huge bays and restore the creek flow (which had been blocked at times and started to flood the area). Our wonderful contractor, Abel Maldonado and his son showed up and inspected the house to report with big smiles that the foundation was untouched and all the house bones were intact and undamaged. Huge relief. We lost a couple windows, a portion of a gutter and a lot of the deck railing. The decks were very well built (by Abel) and acted as a buffer for the house, taking quite a beating. They’ve been restored and look better than ever now.

Best of all, though, his cousin Gus showed up. I had no idea who he was, I thought he was the window guy. He started talking authoritatively and confidently about what we need to do to restore the hill and I thought “man, this guy knows a lot about geology for a window guy”. Turns out he’s a recently retired contractor for Ghilotti Brothers, a huge construction firm I’ve actually build programs for and is very experienced in this kind of thing. California is constantly dealing with landslides, esp. around roads and turns out there are lots of different approaches to remediation. He’s one of these “hey, no problem, I’ve seen this a million times” guys and that was exactly what I needed to hear. He came back after we had removed all the trees and topped off the dangerous ones and performed some real artistry on an excavator which has brought the backyard from post-apocalypse to pre-something.

The main concern was all the material above the break. There’s a fair-size hill above that with lots of big trees. This triggered me the most as I could feel what it would be like if those fell. We had to figure out what to do.

This was something I'd never experienced and had no idea where to start. I consulted with every expert I could find. Geologists, geo-technical engineers, soil engineers, arborists, landscape architects, horticulturalists, tree guys, the County, my astrologer. The geo-technical guys at first proposed huge expensive projects – a 21-foot high steel-reinforced barrier, major steel piers and concrete piers and berms and natural barriers and all sorts of stuff I’d never had to think about before. One guy casually mentioned a half-million dollar price tag to “do it right”. After much consideration we developed a middle-path plan. As one of them said, that hill has been intact for 1000 years (at least). The downslope which fell was a 30 degree slope on a northern facing hill with a creek at the bottom – which I’m told “attract” other water through osmosis. That in combination with the heavy weight of these top-heavy and shallow-rooted bay trees being yanked around by the wind caused a “surficial” slide – meaning just the topsoil and all the trees attached to it. The basic hill seems quite solid and the topsoil above the break is much thinner than below, leading us to believe that the tree roots might be better anchored. We eventually decided to top off all the trees around the perimeter of the break and leave them and their root systems in place to help pin down the soil. We will also be reinforcing the edge of the break with waddles (see how many new words I know now!) and then blanketing the hill with jute and eventually hydro-seeding the area with wildflowers and grasses. The idea being to enlist Mother Nature's help as much as possible.

The first step was to top off the trees around the edge of the break. This was a sight to behold, with these agile guys shimmying up a dubious tree and gradually dismantling these huge multi-trunk trees hundreds of feet above our house. It was actually kind of hard to watch at times as these beautiful trees were stripped of their glory and dragged up piece by piece to be pulverized into mulch (they tell me the 2nd cleanup created enough mulch to fill 22 large dump trucks). It's kind of hard to see in this picture but if you look closely, you'll see the topped-off trees around the perimeter.

Then a couple weeks later – here comes Gus and the excavator and we are now looking at a well-shaped pile of dirt. He also restored the creek – the water is still running which is very atypical. Usually the creek stops running in April or May. There must be so much water in the hills after this wet winter.

Next, we had a group of extremely brave and determined guys work for a week to put up a "jute" bandage which covered the bare hillside and should catch organic material and reduce erosion. Plus, it looks a lot better, we think.

Finally, hydro-seeding and waiting. Eventually, some landscape design and this may look nice in 4-5 years. We'll update this section with pictures as they emerge.

All of this is paid for out-of-pocket, with the exception of a bit of money from our insurance company for the house. There’s no insurance I’ve ever seen for a “backyard hill”. FEMA can’t help without an emergency declaration, we’re not within the Novato city boundaries, the county won’t get involved as we own most of this land. However, our HOA owns the green belt above the break and was kind enough to pay for some tree removal there. This all could have been financially devastating if the stock market hadn’t decided to go bullish for a minute. We were able to get a fair amount out of the market so that helped. We also took out a HELOC. It has been a complete reversal of fortune, as we had been in the retired persons mode of doing very little with our money and having very little debt or few obligations. That situation has changed! But the universe seems to be trying to make it up to us (forgive me for anthropomorphizing the universe but sometimes it feels like that). We were unhurt and were in our comfortable house with heat and light looking out at utter devastation. The mantra is that it could have been worse – way worse. And, for me, once my body processed the experience it became more of a memory and turned into a project - with planning, budgets, schedules. I’m good at that stuff and it gets things moving in a positive direction. Took a while, though.

This happened one day after the 3-year anniversary of the start of our pandemic. We were stuck in Peru on Friday the 13th of March, 2020 but made it back after a while. It couldn’t be clearer that this is the end of a major phase and the start of a new one. This phase has begun auspiciously and it remains to be seen what is to come. Send thoughts & prayers and stay well and safe yourself.

D & P