One month after Bellevue landslide, demolition crews prepare for teardown

BELLEVUE, Wash. — Demolition crews are gearing up for a tear down nearly one month after a landslide destroyed a home in Bellevue.

The incident happened on Jan. 17. Four weeks later, people in the Somerset neighborhood are still displaced, with their homes red-tagged.

Homeowner John Surdi returned to the scene on Wednesday to watch the excavators start digging around the home to prepare the area for demolition. In the next few days, their family will finally get a chance to try save some of their most cherished items from the rubble.

“Thirty days tomorrow,” John Surdi said. “We’re coping. It’s the best we can, we’ve never experienced anything like this,” he said.

Photos Surdi shared from inside the home show the damage.

“All the dishes are smashed, it’s all over the floor, ceiling caved in, walls caved in,” he said.

Even the items somehow untouched, like a piano, some pieces of furniture and a Peloton, are impossible to get out, because there is no safe path in or out of the house.

“They (demolition crews) are going to have the house fall over,” Surdi said. “Then they’re going to, as gently as you can, break it apart, section by section,” he said.

That way, the Surdis can try and salvage some smaller mementos, like photo albums and trophies earned by their kids. He said crews will have some sort of sifter or screening box to look for items like jewelry.

The actual demolition is scheduled to start Saturday morning.

“No one in my family wants to come up. They’re all traumatized,” Surdi said. His family has lived in the home for 22 years.

“It’s just their memory of the house. And they don’t want to come back and look at it, because they want to remember it differently,” Surdi said, getting emotional.

As he describes it, it’s been a “muddy mess” of a month.

There is still no answer on what triggered the water main break and landslide, or who is financially responsible.

Five homes in the cul-de-sac are still red-tagged because inspectors have deemed the teetering Surdi home unsafe to drive by.

Looters hit the neighborhood.

The city of Bellevue even filed a lawsuit against the Surdis to speed up the demolition process. That’s since been dropped.

Now in just a few days, what remains of the Surdis’ home will be gone.

" I’ll be here Saturday,” Surdi said. “I have to be here. Say goodbye,” he said.

It’s still not clear if insurance will cover any of the costs. A GoFundMe set up by one of their daughters to help the Surdis has raised more than $122,000, donated by more than 1,000 people.

“Thank goodness for the GoFundMe and everybody who has donated. It’s incredible. I’m very grateful,” Surdi said.

“I was upset with my daughter when she said she was doing that, I’ve always been pretty self-sufficient. Always self-employed,” he said. “But now I’m glad she did it. Because when you start getting the bills, people don’t realize. I didn’t realize what it takes to navigate through this,” Surdi said.

Right now, Surdi says those funds are going toward attorney fees and the investigation into exactly what happened.

The City of Bellevue says it will be “months” before there are any answers on what triggered the slide from their investigators.

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