A landslide that began cracking walls in 19 homes a year ago in Tijuana’s Sánchez Taboada neighborhood has deepened to five meters, with more than 20 houses now damaged and elderly residents refusing to leave despite red-tag warnings. The slide is one of 53 active landslides the city is tracking, 12 of them advancing rapidly. A total of 3,021 homes across Tijuana now carry red or yellow risk tags, making hillside instability one of the city’s most pressing safety problems.
Unrepaired CESPT Leaks Triggered the Sánchez Taboada Collapse
The slide on Calle Erídano traces back to water and sewer leaks that went unrepaired for years. CESPT, Tijuana’s state-run water utility, never fixed them. Rainwater infiltration then compounded the saturated soil. José Luis Jiménez González, the city’s Civil Protection director, said the combination turned a stable hillside into a slow-motion collapse.
Municipal crews first tagged 19 homes in June 2025 after identifying slope instability. By May 2026, accelerating ground movement pushed the damage past 20 structures. Jiménez González said crews now monitor the site twice daily. “There is still a lot of moisture in the area,” he said at the June 5 inauguration of the Tijuana College of Civil Engineers’ new board. “The movement continues toward Sánchez Taboada and hits the hill in front, which is where the rotation of this slide is occurring.”
Half of all red- and yellow-tagged homes in Tijuana sit in Sánchez Taboada. Some of the worst-hit structures cling to the slopes of Calle Erídano, and those are now empty. But families in red-tagged homes on the flatter, forward-facing lots remain. Most are elderly residents who cannot afford rent elsewhere. Jiménez González confirmed that Civil Protection cannot force evacuations; it can only advise and tag.
Tijuana’s Red and Yellow Tag System Explained
Tijuana’s Civil Protection department uses colored stickers, called engomados, to classify risk. A red tag means a home is considered uninhabitable due to imminent danger of collapse, landslide, or structural failure. A yellow tag indicates elevated risk requiring constant monitoring and possible future evacuation. Neither tag carries legal force to compel a resident to leave.
As of June 2026, the city has tagged 1,900 homes red and 1,012 homes yellow across all colonias. That total of 3,021 tagged homes represents a fraction of the structures built on Tijuana’s steep canyon walls and hillsides over decades of informal settlement. Many of these colonias began as irregular settlements, or asentamientos irregulares, that were later formalized without the grading, drainage, or retaining walls that hillside construction typically requires.
Tijuana sits on a landscape of mesas cut by deep canyons running toward the Pacific. The city’s population grew from roughly 750,000 in 1990 to more than 2 million today, and much of that growth pushed housing onto slopes that engineers consider marginal. Seasonal rains, even modest ones, can destabilize hillsides that have been weakened by leaking water infrastructure or poor drainage.
A Second Active Slide Threatens Avenida Guadalajara
Sánchez Taboada is not the only neighborhood under active watch. Jiménez González also flagged a slide at Montes Escandinavos that is advancing toward Avenida Guadalajara, a major traffic corridor in the eastern part of the city. That slide remains under supervision for collapse risk. No timeline for stabilization was given.
Of the 53 active slides citywide, 12 are classified as advancing rapidly. Civil Protection has prioritized those 12 for constant review, but the department’s capacity to intervene is limited. Stabilizing a hillside typically requires retaining walls, drainage systems, and soil reinforcement costing millions of pesos per site.
The role of CESPT in triggering slides through unrepaired leaks adds a layer of institutional responsibility. In Sánchez Taboada, residents and Civil Protection officials have pointed to the utility’s failure to fix water and sewer breaks as the direct cause of soil saturation. CESPT has faced chronic budget shortfalls and deferred maintenance across its network for years, and leak complaints in hillside colonias often go unresolved for months.
Anyone renting or buying property in Tijuana’s hillside neighborhoods can check risk status by contacting the city’s Civil Protection office directly. Red- and yellow-tag designations are public record. Buyers should also verify whether the property sits in a zone classified as high-risk for landslides on municipal land-use maps, which are available through the city planning department, IMPLAN.
Civil Protection crews will continue twice-daily monitoring at Calle Erídano through the rainy season. The College of Civil Engineers has pledged technical support for risk assessments at the most critical sites, first reported by Punto Norte.