Tuesday evening the city held a private meeting with families and individuals effected by the voluntary evacuation in Nutana.
The evacuation request was issued by the city on Friday July 12 because of major slope failure near properties on 11th Street and Saskatchewan Crescent.
One man left the meeting early, and when asked if gathering was helpful, he responded, “No, not incredibly.”
Land in the area has shifted nearly a meter since late June, causing concern about the safety of the homes in the area.
The city said the private meeting was to update affected people on the situation of the slope failure, outline safety plans, and take questions from residents.
Cameron Stewart, a Nutana resident who attended the meeting, said some people aren’t happy with how things went. “People are scared and people want to know what’s going on,” he said. “I’m a little bit worried about our property, but still you’ve got to listen. You’ve got to listen what the experts are telling you.”
On Wednesday, city officials said the meeting went well. Saskatoon’s Fire Chief Dan Paulsen acknowledged that for the affected residents, this is an emotional situation. ““Everyone is concerned about safety also concerned about the fact that, what are solutions? We can only come up with solutions once we have data, and that’s why we got together.”
The city is asking all residencies under the voluntary evacuation order have their homes evaluated privately by engineers and supply the data to the city.
“We don’t have the structural details of their properties,” Rob Frank, strategic services branch manager told reporters Wednesday.
City administration is submitting a proposal for the sole sourcing of the engineering required to monitor the bank on Wednesday. If city council approves, a contractor will begin monitoring the slope Thursday. The monitoring process will go on for 90 days, and then a report will be submitted back to the city.
“We’re trying to move forward on a public safety point of view to ensure something gets done,” Frank said.
With that report and the information the city is asking the affected residents to supply, Paulsen and Frank said they would then be able to come up with potential solutions to fix the slope failure.
