“My backyard slid into the canyon,” Skyline resident Rosalie Wilkerson said while surveying the damage left behind by the Christmas week storms sweeping Southern California.
Wilkerson stepped outside her home on Gribble Street Tuesday morning to let her dogs out when she noticed a crack in the dirt and heard the ground shifting.
“Sure enough, I heard a loud crashing that sounded like an earthquake, walked back outside and there’s a crater in my backyard,” Wilkerson said.
The dirt took a cinderblock retaining wall and the gate with it, sending 10 to 15 feet of mud sliding down the hill.
Wilkerson and her daughter were the only people in the home at the time.
City engineers will head to the property to check the integrity of the hillside. In the meantime, Wilkerson said she's been asked to find temporary shelter and has asked the Red Cross for assistance.
“They’re telling us we’ll have to be out for six months to a year while they repair the embankment,” she said. “Merry Christmas.”
In another section of Skyline, a storm water channel overflowed Tuesday, sending about a foot of water into units at one apartment complex.
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Firefighters removed some fences and created some channels for the excess water by digging ditches.
“Today is probably the worst day,” said San Diego Fire Capt. James Lang. “And it will probably continue through the evening.”
Firefighters also brought in sandbags to help divert any other rainfall away from the units.
