Small bluff collapse in Del Mar briefly puts train service on pause

A stretch of the bluffs near 14th Street in Del Mar slid to the beach early Friday afternoon, Feb. 15, briefly halting train service while the stability of the cliff was assessed, a city official said.

Several people saw a roughly 30-foot long section of the bluff collapse shortly after noon, said Jon Edelbrock, Del Mar’s director of community services.

No one was hurt, he said.

The collapse went a few feet deep into the rain-saturated cliff, which had “a lot of opportunistic cracks,” Edelbrock said.

The slide came the day after a storm packed with subtropical moisture soaked the region, a dousing that went down as one of the wettest winter days in decades.

The train service through the area was put on pause until officials could get a look at the cliff and assess its stability. The tracks were reopened shortly after 2 p.m.

-- Teri Figueroa is a reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune