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SF Telegraph Hill Rockslide Crushes Car, Forces Evacuation

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) - A rockslide near San Francisco's Telegraph Hill crushed a car and caused the partial evacuation of an apartment building Monday morning, a fire department spokeswoman said.

The rockslide was reported at 9:37 a.m. near Montgomery and Lombard streets.

Part of the slide landed on a parked car, but no injuries have been reported, fire department Lt. Karen Kerr said.

She said the second through fourth floors an apartment building have been evacuated as a precaution and the area has been cordoned off.

KCBS' Doug Sovern Reports:

Dawn Walker, who lives on the sixth floor of the building, said she wasn't sure what happened at first.

"I didn't know it was a rock, I thought it was an earthquake," Walker said.

Mohammed Nuru, interim director of the San Francisco Department of Public Works, said at the scene this morning that a geotechnical engineer and a geologist are being brought in to assess the rockslide.

"It's one of the largest slides I've seen," Nuru said.

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A previous slide in 2007 affected the other side of Telegraph Hill, near Broadway and Vallejo Street.

There is no estimate yet for when the rocks will be cleared, but the residents of six units whose apartments back up to the hillside are being kept out of their homes for now as a precaution, he said.

Crews will be putting up a concrete barrier to stop some of the loose debris from shifting further, Nuru said.

(Copyright 2012 by CBS San Francisco and Bay City News Service. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

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