Castanet

It was a tearful scene Friday at a Sechelt, B.C., subdivision, where residents packed their belongings amid falling snow, moving — for now — out of what they thought were their long-term homes.

The scene unfolded at the Seawatch development, where 14 families have been placed under an evacuation alert due to persistent and dangerous sinkholes.

The road to the area, where a number of the homes are assessed at over $1 million, has been blocked off with concrete barriers since last month.

TreeGuy wrote:People just aren’t smart. Why do we build where we shouldn’t build?

Build a house at lake level with a basement below lake level and you are surprised and upset when it floods.

Build a house on property that backs onto a forest and you are surprised and upset when it burns down.

They have known about the sinkholes for a decade or more. Were these homeowners duped into this or did they choose to ignore the warnings?

Hurtlander wrote:

TreeGuy wrote:People just aren’t smart. Why do we build where we shouldn’t build?

Build a house at lake level with a basement below lake level and you are surprised and upset when it floods.

Build a house on property that backs onto a forest and you are surprised and upset when it burns down.

They have known about the sinkholes for a decade or more. Were these homeowners duped into this or did they choose to ignore the warnings?

I wouldn’t just question the logic of people wanting to build there, why were people even issued building permits for that location if there was a known sinkhole problem ?

TreeGuy wrote:People just aren’t smart. Why do we build where we shouldn’t build?

Build a house at lake level with a basement below lake level and you are surprised and upset when it floods.

Build a house on property that backs onto a forest and you are surprised and upset when it burns down.

They have known about the sinkholes for a decade or more. Were these homeowners duped into this or did they choose to ignore the warnings?

"The 14 houses that have been evacuated, they're suffering a large economic loss as far as the property is concerned, and they may be economically ruined," said Jay Straith, a lawyer who litigated a high-profile North Vancouver landslide case dating back to 2005.

It's possible legal recourse is the only hope the residents have, but it's a long expensive journey to find justice in the courts for a case like this.

"It's going to take — a good guess is — three to five years of litigation to get this thing sorted out," said Straith, adding that legal fees will likely run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Straith said the list of people to sue is long, and anyone who gets caught up in the case would be expected to sue someone else.

bob vernon wrote:Geotechnical approvals are a huge scam. We had a subdivision in the north Okanagan that got approved. The geotechnical testing was done in August, but there was a spring that percolated up only during April to June during runoff when a lake on the hill above the subdivision was full. We pointed this out to the geotechnical people on site, and to the Regional District. The subdivision was approved and houses built. The houses built near that spring have enormous cracks in the foundations with occasional water. Try reselling a house like that.

dontrump wrote:The city knew that there were problems but they gave them a permit to subdivide and build? why?