Last home on imperiled Pacifica cliffside block comes down
2-bedroom on cliff side of avenue in Pacifica demolished
The Pacific Ocean, which loses few arguments, won another one on Thursday in Pacifica.
A giant yellow excavator gobbled up a cozy two-bedroom cliffside house, the last one on the west side of the imperiled 500 block of Esplanade Avenue, and spat out the pieces in a neat pile to be hauled off to the dump.
The former homeowners stood and watched, dry-eyed. Rage and disbelief were long gone. Months ago, they had moved on to the final stage of the grieving process — acceptance. It’s all that’s left when your opponent is the largest body of water on Earth.
“It’s hard to give up the dream,
but what can you do?” said Melissa McConnell as, precisely at 8 a.m., the excavator claw reached out for its first bite, a large mouthful of garage.
The demolition of 532 Esplanade Ave. was the end of a nine-year struggle for McConnell and her husband, Tom Wilson, who stood across the street while the demolition team did its work. Their house, like a dozen others to the south and the large apartment complex to the north, had fallen victim to the storms and high seas that in recent years ate away the cliffside on the ocean side of the street.
Two years ago, half their backyard fell into the sea. The couple hired a contractor to lift up the entire house and move it 20 feet inland. That didn’t work. The ocean laughed it off — and also the construction of a rock wall at the bottom of the cliff — and kept on coming. The couple tried to find a nearby empty lot to move the entire house to, but that didn’t pencil out.
So McConnell and Wilson sold their home to the city of Pacifica and dropped by on Thursday to watch the final scene play out.
The man running the excavator, Andy Stich, said demolishing things is what you do in the demolition business and he could not afford the luxury of sympathy.
“Is it hard to tear up someone’s dream?” Stich asked aloud. “I don’t think about that. Some dreams come out well and some don’t. This house is returning to nature. That’s how it is.”
His main concern, Stich said, was keeping his eye on what he was doing to prevent the excavator, with him inside, from falling over the cliff edge and into the sea like McConnell’s backyard.
Neighbors watched. Some realized that, with the house gone, they now had oceanfront views. Others wondered how long their new oceanfront views would last.
“You can’t stop nature,” said Daniel Francois, who lives across the street and who knows the excavators could one day come for his house, too.
“I’ve seen a lot of houses disappear,” he said. “Everything is a matter of time around here. Five years? Fifty years? It’s a very strong possibility.”
His thoughts were interrupted by a loud crunch, the sound of the excavator ripping through his former neighbors’ kitchen.
“Oh, my Lord,” said McConnell. “There goes the sliding glass door. There goes the kitchen backsplash. It was so beautiful. Iridescent turquoise.”
It takes a lot less time to knock a house down than to put one up. Within half an hour, the fence, garage, bathroom and kitchen were gobbled up. There was a break in the action when the excavator broke a hydraulic line and had to be fixed. After it returned to action, the living room and bedrooms were history.
By mid-morning, nothing remained but a pile of boards, wires, drywall and memories. The only place the house still existed were in the pictures on McConnell’s mobile phone, courtesy of an online real estate service.
She looked at them for a long time. One photo showed the view from the bathroom window. The closest neighbor to the west being Japan, McConnell revealed that she never felt the need to wear any clothes when standing in front of that window after a shower. With the bathroom window gone, along with the bathroom, it was safe enough to tell all.
The excavator, its job done, fell silent. The police reopened the street. The neighbors went home to ponder.
McConnell looked at the pictures of her house. She hugged her husband, and her husband hugged back. The two of them said they would pick out a few redwood beams from the detritus and incorporate them into their new home, wherever and whenever that might be. For now, they’re living in Contra Costa County.
McConnell took a final check of her mobile phone. The online broker, she noted, was listing it as “off market.”
“You can say that again,” said McConnell.
“Oh, my Lord. There goes the sliding glass door. There goes the kitchen backsplash. It was so beautiful. Iridescent turquoise.” Melissa McConnell, as she watched her house disappear