Around the state

The California Department of Public Health yesterday warned consumers not to eat certain Soy Deli brand tofu products as part of an expanded recall.

Mark Horton, the California Department of Public Health director, said that some of the products from South San Francisco manufacturer Quon Hop and Co. may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes.

The initial recall was announced in September and was expanded Tuesday to include more Soy Deli products that were distributed to supermarkets and natural food stores on the West Coast and in the Midwest.

The expanded recall includes baked tofu in five spice, hickory, honey sesame, teriyaki and savory flavors, mesquite smoke tofu, Hawaiian style fried tofu, nigari vacuum-pack tofu, original, garden, barbeque, teriyaki and Cajun burgers all with date codes on or before Jan. 28, 2008. It also includes water-packed tofu in orange, blue and red, Quong Hop water-packed tofu in red and nigari tofu all with date codes on or before Nov. 28.

The California stores the products were distributed to include Albertsons, Andronico’s, Lunardi’s, Mollie Stone’s Market, Pavilion’s, PW Markets, Ralphs, Safeway, Save Mart Supermarkets, Stater Bros., Vons and Whole Foods Market.

Although no illnesses have been reported in association with the recall, the bacteria can cause fever, headache, stiffness, nausea, abdominal pain and diarrhea.

Landslide threatens

San Diego neighborhood

SAN DIEGO — Residents of million-dollar homes in a hilltop La Jolla neighborhood scrambled to rescue pets and secure belongings Wednesday after a landslide cut a 50-yard-long chasm in a four-lane street, destroying one home and damaging eight others. "The street was sinking before our eyes,” said Holli Weld, who was walking one of her sons to preschool when the ground moved. No injuries were reported but by late afternoon the evacuation had expanded to 111 homes on three streets. The neighborhood is in an area that has a history of landslides dating back to the 1960s.

The earth moved at 9 a.m. the day after city officials warned residents of four homes not to sleep in them because the land might give way.

It wasn’t clear whether those residents heeded the warnings.

The landslide left a 20-foot-deep ravine overlooking Interstate 5 hundreds of feet below.

Orange traffic cones and sections of big concrete pipes sat in the fissure across the crumpled residential street, which serves as a busy shortcut between the surf neighborhood of Pacific Beach to the south and the tony enclave of restaurants and shops in downtown La Jolla, a major tourist draw.

Authorities said most residents had gone to work and only seven people were inside homes near the collapse when it occurred.

Many homes that weren’t in the immediate slide zone were yellow-tagged — meaning that occupants could come and go, but not stay overnight.

Authorities evacuated 49 people from 55 homes, said Maurice Luque, a spokesman for the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department. They declared another 56 homes off-limits.

Weld packed up her car and took her two children to her parents’ house in Pasadena, near Los Angeles, after city officials said her family couldn’t sleep in their house on the opposite side of the street from the collapse.

Weld’s husband, Bryan Smith, a researcher at the University of California, San Diego, stayed behind to take care of their dog and cat.

Smith said many of his neighbors were affiliated with the university or retirees who had moved into their split-level homes when the area was first developed in the 1960s.

A firm hired by the city last month was in the area in the hours before the collapse installing measuring devices after a large section of slope on Mount Soledad began to slip, said Robert Hawk, a city engineering geologist. The city began noticing cracks on Soledad Mountain Road in July and water and gas main breaks in August.

Officials first became concerned about a landslide three or four weeks ago. A water line in the neighborhood was replaced with an above-ground pipeline in September to avert damage from the moving earth.

After the outside firm advised that some residents should not stay overnight in their homes, the city sent letters to residents on Monday and on Tuesday sent officials to the four homes that now border the collapse, Hawk said.

The letter delivered Tuesday to homeowners stated that they should not stay overnight but said that the city was not making any recommendations about whether the homes should be occupied at all.

The landslide sent earth sliding down into backyards of houses in the street below, Hawk said.

"It is fairly well-defined and localized,” Hawk said.

Electricity was initially cut off to 2,400 customers but only about 100 customers were without power by late afternoon, according to San Diego Gas & Electric Co. Gas was cut off to about a dozen customers.

At least three significant hill slides have occurred in the area between 1961 and 1994, including a major failure in 1961 that destroyed seven homes under construction.

The road repairs will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, said mayoral spokesman Fred Sainz. Mayor Jerry Sanders planned to declare a state of emergency in the area, making the city eligible for state and federal aid.

The American Red Cross opened a shelter at La Jolla High School.