Six hundred tons of dirt have been trucked into Kelowna’s Samurai Court after a retaining wall collapsed on the street two weeks ago.
A jumble of cinder blocks and sod is still piled on a steep slope in the Black Mountain neighbourhood.
“It’s a little bit of an uneasy feeling. You feel like maybe sometime something else is going to happen, right? You just don’t know,” neighbor Jason Tansem said.
Curiosity about the newly dumped dirt is growing in the neighbourhood as residents said they hadn’t been updated on the status of the sliding slope.
“I’m honestly surprised. I think we’ve been waiting for something to happen,” neighbour Lyndsay Thomson said. “We haven’t seen a lot of action in that area for the last couple weeks, so we were unsure as to who was going to take responsibility for it.”
“It’s exciting to see that dirt’s being laid so something’s happening,” she added.
On Wednesday and Thursday, about 40 dump trucks dropped off the dirt, said Darin Thompson, Kelowna’s roadways construction supervisor.
“The dirt’s there to support the toe of the wall so it doesn’t slip out and fail and have another slide in another location,” Thompson said.
Thompson said an engineering report is still being completed. The dirt is a stop-gap measure until the city can find a permanent fix, he added.
He said a long-term plan hasn’t been found yet, and it’s not clear how long the dirt will sit on Samurai Court.
“It’s going to be a process to find out what the fix is for the wall,” he said.
Thompson said the dirt also makes the road safe enough for drivers. Up until now, they weren’t supposed to be using it, he said.