La Conchita Ca

Lawyers for the families of people who died in the La Conchita mudslide said Thursday that a judge's ruling tossing out some of their claims will cause some delays in their case but will not defeat them. "There is no doubt ... we will go to trial," said Anthony Murray, a lawyer from the Los Angeles office of Loeb & Loeb, which is representing family members of 10 people who died as well as people injured in the slide and other residents. Ventura County Superior Court Judge Vincent J. O'Neill Jr.

Scores of residents disregarded warnings and returned Friday to the devastated coastal town of La Conchita, where a mudslide earlier this week killed 10 people. "As people reenter, they need to know that they're going into an area that's highly unstable," Ventura County Fire Chief Bob Roper told the Board of Supervisors before a community meeting at the Ventura County fairgrounds. "We may not be able to access La Conchita if there is another slide. I want to make that clear."

Over the din of heavy machinery in their seaside hamlet, some residents of La Conchita returned Saturday despite the risk of another mudslide, while others packed to leave for a while or for good. "It's going to be tough, it's not going to be easy, but we'll stay here as long as we can," said Bob Hart, 75, standing outside the two-story Bakersfield Avenue home he has lived in for a decade.

Following intense rain, more landslides will probably occur at La Conchita, the seaside Ventura County hamlet where 10 people were killed last month when a wave of mud and debris crushed their homes, a new federal study has found. "Future landslides are inevitable there," said research geologist Randy Jibson, author of a U.S. Geological Survey analysis begun after the Jan. 10 tragedy and released Friday. "I call La Conchita heaven as a landslide scientist," he said.

It was just a dozen streets and a gas station jammed between the Pacific Ocean and a 600-foot hill. But for Brad Lilley, La Conchita was the last affordable beach community on the Southern California coast and an opportunity to live a life he thought was obsolete. It was the surf-shirt ideal of the ramshackle beach town, with banana trees, eccentrics and even a few "Woody" station wagons. Rincon's famous point break was close by, and the monthly rent less than a weekend at a Santa Barbara hotel.

Even as officials promised to allow residents to return to La Conchita, experts described the seaside town Wednesday as one of the most landslide-prone places in California -- so dangerous that Ventura County officials should do much more to monitor slides and warn residents of hillside movement. "It's one of the landslide capitals in California," said Ed Keller, a geology professor at UC Santa Barbara. "You drive along that coast and it's just one landslide after another."

Ventura County officials say it was tough to reason with residents of La Conchita. They were living under a looming 600-foot cliff that slumped a decade ago and destroyed about half a dozen houses. And then there was the Model T Ford buried in someone's backyard that hinted at earlier cataclysmic events. Signs posted by the county -- "Enter at Your Own Risk" -- after the 1995 disaster were torn down. Someone even defiantly spray-painted: "What Slide?" on the collapsed roof of a house.

Standing on a muddy street near the La Conchita house where she had been living, April Bernal, 18, couldn't stop smiling as a tall man in sunglasses strode toward her and her family. "I'm Bill," said Bill Harbison, as he engulfed the slim girl in a bear hug.

A pair of geologists warned that an earthquake could loosen a bluff over the seaside hamlet of La Conchita, triggering a landslide worse than the one in January that wiped out part of the community and killed 10 people. Geologists from UC Santa Barbara reported their findings Wednesday at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Salt Lake City. They said a "megaslide" occurred 20,000 to 30,000 years ago and sent tons of mud and rock into the ocean.

As the search for victims of the La Conchita mudslide abruptly ended Thursday because of dangerous shifting ground, top Ventura County officials expressed grave doubts about whether the town could ever be made safe for residents and said taxpayers should not foot the potentially enormous bill. Implicitly contradicting Gov.