After two days of sleeping in a hotel, the evacuated tenants of an Esquimalt apartment building are finally allowed to re-enter their homes.
On Tuesday, June 13th, a construction site at 666 Admirals Road, which was in the excavation stage, had a shoring collapse that created a sinkhole on the neighbouring building’s property making it unsafe for residents to remain in their homes.
Esquimalt Fire Department evacuated the 17 residents of 656 Admirals Road and another building on Constance Way following the shoring collapse, but soon after, the Constance Way tenants were allowed to re-enter their homes.
“There was a drop of about 20 feet of earth right next to the building which kind of took out their roadway a little bit, and there’s still one car they can’t move off but that’s a significant amount of dirt,” said Esquimalt Fire Department Chief Steven Serbic.
He believes the situation occurred due to the earth not being native, but rather filled in when the original structures were built there during construction decades ago.
Related:
The 17 residents who were not allowed back in their homes had to be put up in a hotel for the last two nights while engineers worked to deem the building safe, according to the Township of Esquimalt.
On Thursday, June 15th, the Township of Esquimalt announced the engineers inspecting the building deemed its safety despite the close proximity of the sinkhole.
“The apartment at 656 Admirals Road has been cleared for re-entry by engineers hired by Eagle Crest Construction,” said Tara Zajac, a spokesperson for Esquimalt. “Esquimalt Fire Rescue has ensured emergency exit points are up to standard.”
Initially, following the collapse, the Township of Esquimalt set up an emergency social services station at the Archie Browning Sports Centre. Zajac says now that the crisis has been resolved for the residents, that station will begin to shut down.
Eagle Crest Construction is the general contractor of the construction site and they are the ones who now have to deal with fixing the cave-in which impacted the neighbouring property as well as reinforcing it in a way this will not occur again.
