San Clemente's Bluffs Keep Falling on the Tracks — $34M Homes Above, a $310M Public Bill

On April 27, 2023, the hillside under Casa Romantica in San Clemente, California, dropped about 20 feet while crews were still drilling into it. Debris slid toward the railroad at the foot of the bluff, every passenger train through town stopped, and 24 units next door were evacuated. A few miles down the same coast, a home had just sold for about $34 million, a city record. Since 2021, slides and surf have cut the busy coastal rail line here again and again, for nearly a full year in total, and much of the ground that keeps failing belongs to private owners. In this video: • Cyprus Shore, 2021–2022: a private slope that pushed the tracks up to 28 inches toward the ocean, and a $12M emergency to anchor it • Nixon's Western White House: why the famous $65M figure was only an asking price, and the $34M sale that set the record • Spring 2023: Buena Vista apartments evacuated, Casa Romantica red-tagged, 251 days of disrupted service • Mariposa Point, 2024: a walkway on the tracks, a $7.2M wall for a privately owned slope, $38M spent at three sites • Dana Point, February 2024: three large homes left at the edge of a fresh landslide • Why homeowners insurance excludes earth movement, and the 1977 rule that decides who may build a seawall • About $305M in state and federal grants, a new emergency in 2025, and a $310.5M rail program • Summer 2026: surf over the tracks, and Hurricane Marie's swell closing the line again on September 6 • Sand: 114,000 cubic yards placed against a 3 million cubic yard deficit, and the Measure M sales tax vote on November 3 • Del Mar on the same railroad: a 1912 seawall gives way, an $88M stabilization, tunnel options up to $5.1B • Grandview Beach in Encinitas, 2019: the human cost of a falling bluff ⏱ CHAPTERS 0:00 Twenty Feet in an Afternoon 3:18 Twenty-Eight Inches 6:04 Mariposa Point 8:43 The 1977 Line 11:05 A Summer of Surf 15:17 Eighty-Eight Million and a Tunnel 17:48 Who Pays Next