Sliding Together: Community Support Grows for Residents Affected by Portuguese Bend Land Movement By Writer and Contributor Emily McGinn
Portuguese Bend has been undergoing unprecedented land movement in the region, leading to almost 250 homes on the Hill losing access to gas and power earlier this month due to safety hazards. Gov. Gavin Newsom also declared a state of emergency after the recent turn of events.
In response, local businesses and community members have stepped up to help.
For example, local business owner and Palos Verdes native Chris Bredesen organized a fundraiser to support those impacted. Bredesen owns multiple restaurants in the Beach Cities and Torrance, including The Rockefeller in Redondo, Hermosa and Manhattan; R10 Social House; The Riviera Mexican Cantina; the Riviera Mexican Grill; Primo; and Captain Kidd’s. On Sept. 18, 15% of proceeds from people’s meals went toward relief efforts.
“With how tight the community is, there are friends of friends who you know who live up there,” Bredesen said. “Hearing about the struggles they are going through, especially losing out on utilities and things like that, I just thought here’s an opportunity where we can help some of our fellow community members.”
Bredesen and his team will use the funds to buy specific supplies that residents need and will be dropping the supplies off in Portuguese Bend to be distributed to the most needy people.
“It’s important because we’re all part of this community and when you see people struggling and potentially losing their home — the biggest asset of their life — from no fault of their own, it seems like the right thing to do to help people in any way,” he said. “I would hope that if the roles were reversed that someone else would feel the same way I feel.”
Other businesses have also pitched in to help in different ways. For example, the San Pedro and Peninsula YMCA has offered resources like access to showers, rooms for working on homework and free Wi-fi and air conditioning to those affected.
Portuguese Bend residents have also been searching for ways to help themselves. Sheri Hastings, who lives on Vanderlip Drive, has been in the community since the late 1970s. Her property has been affected, with a fissure destroying a building on her property.
Hastings and others in the area are now attempting to raise funds to line Altimira Canyon to help redirect water away from the already developed fissures and slow the movement of the landslide in the area. She is searching for volunteers to help as well as financial support for the project.
“We need donations of materials from all over and we need donations of time from people, and we need donations of heavy equipment, or the use of heavy equipment,” Hastings said.
She and other residents are also putting together an art auction to raise money to combat the land movement.
There has been some controversy swirling around the issue of fundraising for disaster relief for the Palos Verdes residents affected by the slide. However, both Hastings and Bredesen point out that stereotypes about the area are not always true.
“People have this thought in their minds that Palos Verdes is a rich community,” Bredesen said. “That’s not entirely true. There are people who are living up there who are on fixed incomes and have been living up there for 30-50 years, and their house is their nest egg. There are older community members as well. They need help.”
Hastings said that she has seen great sadness and fear among her neighbors as they face the possibility of losing property or even homes. However, she also sees good coming from their ability to come together to help one another.
“I think there are a lot of conflicting emotions,” Hastings said. “We've all been helping each other, and [we have felt] gratitude for each other and gratitude for being in this particular neighborhood, where we have such a wonderful mix of artists, tradesmen, engineers and people with business acumen. All of that combined has made this a very unique place to have something like this happen, because we were able to help ourselves. We can work together to help ourselves.”
Community members can also contribute to the relief effort through a GoFundMe set up by the Vanderlip Heritage Fund to support the Portuguese Bend residents.
Bio:
Emily McGinn is a journalist based in the Los Angeles area. She enjoys reporting on and writing about a variety of topics from lifestyle to news, especially in her areas of specialty, environmental science and political science.
