It happened while Wayne Strickland was eating breakfast.

"It sounded like dinosaurs in the movie 'Jurassic Park' coming through the woods," he said.

What he heard was a hillside above Bancroft Drive giving way, just a few doors away. "We really feel bad for our neighbors," he said.

Three houses are temporarily condemned by the city, their residents evacuated indefinitely. The homes weren't damaged, but conditions remain unstable.

Now the City of Roanoke and the Western Virginia Water Authority are scrambling to figure out what happened.

"This will be a joint effort, with a lot of people looking into what was the cause, what was contributing factors," said Sarah Baumgardner, spokesperson for the Water Authority. She says a number of issues might be at play.

"We know that there's lots of precipitation that would contribute to unstable soils, but there's also water from this water main break," she said.

The break happened up hill and blocks away early this morning on Burnleigh Road. Water Authority crews found and fixed the leak. The concern now is incoming rain.

"We want to minimize any more soil coming off that slope," said Baumgardner. That means hay bales, pumps, and a round-the-clock monitoring crew have all been put in place to monitor conditions.

All this has residents like Wayne Strickland worried about what could happen in their own backyards.

"We are concerned though, we're on a slope and there's always a chance that a slope will slide," he said.