UC Santa Barbara students are moving back into homes perched along a rapidly eroding California cliff, just as a powerful El Nino threatens to unleash heavy rain and pounding surf that can send chunks of the bluff crashing into the Pacific.
Del Playa Drive is filling up again for the fall quarter, with students crowding balconies and yards, cars stacked two and three deep in driveways and moving boxes piled beside dumpsters.
But for tenants living closest to the edge, the ground beneath the party keeps getting thinner.
“Erosion’s always kind of in the back of your mind,” one tenant told The Santa Barbara Independent.
Another student said she has watched friends lose pieces of their backyards since her freshman year.
“It’s the only one you can’t see from the beach. All the others are just right by the cliff,” she told The Independent.
Now El Nino could put the unstable coastline under even more pressure.
Heavy rain can soak through Isla Vista’s sandy upper layers and reach fractures in the weaker mudstone and shale below.
Meanwhile, high tides and storm-driven waves can pound the bluff from the ocean side.
Larry Gurrola, an engineering consulting geologist with more than 30 years of experience studying cliff erosion, described what happens when the bluff finally gives way.
“It’s almost like a glacier collapsing sometimes, where these blocks collapse out and then break up on the beach,” Gurrola told the outlet.
The danger has already hit Del Playa homes hard.
In February 2024, a major cliff failure on the 6700 block forced 45 tenants to evacuate after a balcony cracked and collapsed.
Another balcony on the 6600 block plunged into the ocean two months later.
Geologists warn that such moves only buy time, with conservative estimates projecting another 25 feet of retreat over the next half-century.
