Scarborough gets lace lift’
Explosives sheared away a Scarborough cliff face yesterday as residents and schoolchildren watched from a safe distance. A quick-fire succession of blasts sent unstable rock crashing on to a bed of sand on Sumner’s Scarborough Road. From 400 to 500 tonnes of rock were loosened in the explosions, which were so well controlled that none of the debris escaped on to nearby buildings. A big dust cloud rose up the hillside as the cliff overhang fell. Onlookers were allowed to get closer after the blasts, but they were kept away from the road as a contractor shovelled down more rocks and dirt from the cliff top. Heavy equipment moved in to clear away the sand,
scooping it over the side of the sea wall. Other sand was trucked to the main Sumner beach, between Cave Rock and Shag Rock. Mr Robert McGiffin, the rock excavation contractor, said that about 25kg of explosives had been used to bring down the rock, which broke into jagged boulders. “It was really only a trimming shot to straighten the face up and take the overhang out of it,” he said. A track above the cliff was built two years ago by Project Employment Programme workers in preparation for yesterday’s blast. Boulders piled in the roadway will be used by the Christchurch City Council to bolster sea protection works nearby.
Later in the day, when traffic was allowed to use
Scarborough Road past the paddling pool again, contractors worked along the cliff face from a crane bucket, removing more rock. Mr McGiffin said he had found deep cracks running back into the hill when he inspected the cliff a few years ago. Blasting had been the only way to get the unstable material down. Mr Bruce Scott, the City Council’s streetworks engineer, said that unstable rock had been found about 10 years ago, during inspections made after the cliff further along the road had collapsed and damaged a tearooms underneath it. The overhang destroyed yesterday had been considered safe then, but the council had decided that it would have to be removed “some day-” _________
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Press, 30 May 1985, Page 3
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353Scarborough gets lace lift’ Press, 30 May 1985, Page 3
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