SLIPS ENDANGER HOUSES

Dominion, Volume 35, Issue 8, 4 October 1941, Page 10

SLIPS ENDANGER HOUSES

Oriental Bay Homes Evacuated TROUBLE IN MANY SUBURBS Two houses have had to be evacuated at Oriental Bay because of bad slips from high up on the bluff where St. Gerard’s Monastery stands. Two slices, extending almost from the cliff edge (in .the grounds of St. Gerard’s) to ground level below have been carved from the hill. _ One ot the two slips, which are divided only by a few yards, came down at the rear of “Craigside” Hats (a four-story concrete structure) and the house adjoining on the northern side. The rubble and trees, plus liquid mud, made havoc of the back-yards, and blocked one entrance to the lower fiat for n time, but up to last evening had done no structural damage. The second slip struck the rear ot Nos. 158 and ICO, Oriental Parade, which have been evacuated. Other slips occurred yesterday in Wilkinson .Street, Oriental Bay, and from the old quarry face, opposite the tramway terminus in Oriental Bay, where damage was done to some of the scarlet-painted garden seats. Two dwellings at Island Bay have been damaged. A heavy fall of earth struck a dwelling in Jackson Street and in Freeling Street a concrete wall collapsed on to a house, breaking into it. Another house is endangered at Houghton Bay, where a large s.ip blocked the entire road. Property owners in numerous parts of the hill suburbs are facing the prospect of damage. Some 50 feet of a concrete retaining wall fronting two houses at the corner of Elizabeth and Austin Streets has collapsed. A. nasty slip has come down in San Sebastian Road, behind the Wellington Club, where the slip has gone right across the road and scoured out the footpath. Large quantities of debris have been carried down at the .back of the club, where there is considerable Hooding. On the upper part of the same road large bluegum trees have slipped down on to the road, carrying, away the electric light and telephone wires. A large residence above Chaytor Street is threatened oy further falls from a vertical face. In Wilton Road a cottage is left perched on the edge of a slushy clay slide. Two homes in Fairview Crescent are in uncomfortable positions indeed, and in Adelaide Road a 30-foot retaining wall, part of which has already gone, threatens the house above and the house below as well. At 27 Everton Terrace, .which adjoins Kelburn Park, several slips have occurred, the most serious being a lengthy brick and concrete wall which has collapsed against the . house occupied by Mr. H. L. Coles, breaking windows and damaging its structure.