Justin Marinello peered into the deep, gaping hole just steps from the front porch of his La Habra condominium on Monday, March 20.
For the better part of the last month, rain has soaked the area, as back-to-back storms hit Southern California. Finally, what used to be the remnants of a greenway separating two rows of condominiums in the Coyote Village at 925 W. Imperial Highway complex gave way last Wednesday, opening up a chasm about the height of a nearly two-story building.
All of that dirt and debris tumbled down into what turned out to be a storm channel lined with cement bricks. On Monday, a current of water slowly flowed through the channel.
Old graffiti was clearly visible on the channel walls, what residents said likely was left by teenagers sneaking into the waterway from where there’s an opening on the south side of Imperial.
The ground shook when the sinkhole opened up. The rumbling jolted Marinello, 39, awake that night.
“It sounded like a big crash, like maybe a semi-truck,” Marinello said. But he said he also felt the walls of his unit rumbling.
“I thought it could have been a light earthquake at first.”
The opening of a huge gash in the ground right next to their condos likely came as a shock. But the presence of the sinkhole couldn’t have been much of a surprise — the north side of the greenway also collapsed in 2019, also leaving a huge hole that still has not been fixed, nearly four years later.
While county workers cleared out the dirt, work to repair the now two giant holes in the complex has not begun. That’s because who owns the storm channel is still up for debate: the county of Orange, the Orange County Flood Control District and the city of La Habra are all trying to figure that out in court. The Coyote Village Homeowners Association filed against all three in 2020.
A jury trial to decide the case was first scheduled for 2022, then delayed until this year. The trial has not been held, however, according to court…
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