In a coastal town in southern California, where multimillion-dollar homes tower over the Pacific Ocean, about 140 homes were still cut off from power Monday as worsening landslides prompted evacuation warnings and gas shutoffs.

The energy company Southern California Edison announced that it had cut off electricity to households in a district of Rancho Palos Verdes, about 40 kilometers south of Los Angeles, on Sunday afternoon for safety reasons. Some residents of the city of 42,000 were therefore forced to quickly find alternative accommodation.

“The land movements in the Portuguese Bend community have created such a dangerous situation that we have made the very difficult decision to shut off power indefinitely to prevent these devices from starting wildfires,” Larry Chung, vice president of customer loyalty for Southern California Edison, said at a news conference.

Last week, a power line fell in the Portuguese Bend neighborhood, sparking a small fire. The outage prompted city officials to ask residents in affected areas to make evacuation plans and open an emergency response center to help with cell phone charging, relocation and mental health care.

“We are in an ever-changing crisis, and we need to be prepared,” Rancho Palos Verdes City Manager Ara Mihranian said at Sunday’s press conference. “It’s the only way we can stay safe.”

Evacuations are no longer mandatory as of Monday morning, but the city administration has asked affected residents who want to stay in their homes to “limit their water and sanitation consumption, especially at night when generators can be temporarily turned off.” Currently, the generators are helping to keep the sewage system running, the city administration said.

The land in Rancho Palos Verdes, which sits on the bluffs of the Palos Verdes Peninsula and is home to prime real estate such as Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles, has been shifting since the 1950s. But geologists say it is shifting at a rate of more than a foot per week in some areas, threatening certain residential areas.

Scientists began studying the area after gas services were shut off in Portuguese Bend last month after “significant new earth movements” “stressed” infrastructure. City Public Works Director Ramzi Awwad said at a recent council meeting that the earth movement was “novel and unprecedented.”

An increase in heavy rains over the past two years has only exacerbated the problem along California’s coast, with water soaking mountain slopes. Climate change is also increasing rainfall across the country.