SEATTLE -- The view from Marty Lyons's front window in West Seattle is impressive. But the view of his front yard -- not so much. It's a plastic covered mess of downed trees and crumbling dirt.
"It's very nerve-wracking," he said.
Marty's house is precariously close to the edge of a disaster in the making. His deck has been tagged by the city as unsafe. His windows are starting to crack. It's all because of recurring landslides along Beach Drive in West Seattle.
"Basically it's like telling everybody we've got the plague in our house. It's very disarming. Not a good outcome," said Lyons.
Lyons and 27 other homeowners are now suing the city to fix the hillside - homeowners both on the hill and in the slide's path down below.
Problems have been going on there since the 1930s when homeowners say the city widened Beach Road and destabilized the slope. There have been slides here ever since.
"All we want is the city to sit down with us and say, 'Maybe this is part our problem. How do we fix it?'" asked Lyons.
The fix is likely more than $200,000.
"Either there's a fix or our house goes down the hill. It's that simple," he said.
Seattle's city attorney refused comment Tuesday about the suit. The homeowners tell us they're hoping not to go to court -- preferring to find a resolution through mediation.
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