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District fills sinkhole on North Gale

Seawatch subdivision

A family of five in West Porpoise Bay was still not living at home more than two weeks after a large sinkhole opened on their property on North Gale Avenue in the Seawatch subdivision.

“They’re definitely not back in the house,” District of Sechelt communications manager Connie Jordison said Tuesday. “They were advised by a geotechnical adviser not to occupy the house.”

Jordison said the family “have good support from the community, I understand.”

The District, meanwhile, filled in the three-metre-deep sinkhole last Friday “on a non-prejudicial basis,” she said. “Any further direction will have to follow what our legal advice says.”

No action has been taken on a separate property on the same street that was showing signs of instability in the driveway area.

Geotechnical engineers for the District and the developer are “still looking at studies and trying to discover the cause of what’s going on under the ground,” Jordison said.

“Certainly we are very concerned with the safety of the residents of the subdivision and we’re taking every measure we can.”

In June 2012, a sinkhole opened in the same subdivision on Seawatch Lane, also about three metres in depth. After more than a year, a geotechnical engineering firm declared the sinkhole and its source permanently fixed, the developer said at the time.

The source was identified as an underground watercourse.