SANTEE, Calif. (KGTV) – Santee resident Richard Hoang said something jolted him and his wife out of bed Wednesday night.
“All of a sudden, we hear this giant thump, almost like an earthquake, and it shook our house,” Hoang said. “We kind of got up and, why is the earthquake only one shake instead of continually rattling?”
It wasn’t the ground beneath them. But rather, last week’s rain helping bring down a huge boulder from the hillside into Hoang’s backyard.
“The rock just came down. It rolled down and hit our retaining wall there,” Hoang said.
After that, Hoang moved himself, his wife and his daughter to the other side of the house out of precaution. About an hour or so later, he said another boulder fell into his yard.
When Hoang bought their house in 2018, he had a sneaky feeling that one of these days, the rocks would come tumbling down. So, he decided to build two retaining walls to prevent something worse from happening if they did.
“I knew if I didn’t build this wall because, before there was a lot of dirt here, that rock would’ve come down and rolled right into that bedroom and completely demolish the house,” Hoang said. “I think I would’ve been the one killed because I sleep right there and then my wife is on the other side.”
As he works with his insurance company on repairing the damage and trying to remove the boulders, Hoang encourages more homeowners to look into building retaining walls to protect their home and their family.
“If you look at a place like Sunset Cliffs or La Jolla that come crumbling down that’s been there for millions of years, these things will come down easily with the rain we recently had,” Hoang said.
