Residents in a hillside Los Angeles-area community were woken up by the sound of a horrific landslide that destroyed a home and threatened the structural integrity of at least two others, according to a report.
The landslide reportedly happened just before 3 am in Sherman Oaks on the 3700 block of North Ventura Canyon Avenue.
The community is approximately 12 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles. Several people were evacuated from one home and the initial search found no victims, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.
Though there is no word on what caused the landslide, Southern California has had above-average precipitation this winter and much of the ground has been saturated.
The destroyed home may have been in the midst of a renovation that now is irrelevant as the dwelling appears to be little more than a pile of wood now. The landslide pulled a swimming pool and deck away from the home and left a tennis court on the edge of a large fissure in the ground.
"The Department of Building and Safety is responding to assess the structures and hillsides," the Fire Department said."We want to use this as a good reminder that having an emergency plan is necessary year-round," the fire department said in a statement. "These events are not isolated to 'fire season' or Santa Ana wind events or 'atmospheric river' rain events."
Southern California has seen a lull in storms in recent days, but slides and rockfalls have continued. Some rain could return this weekend, the National Weather Service said.
