And then it was gone
Excavator bucket smashes Nova Scotia couple’s beach retirement dreams
ANNAPOLIS COUNTY, N.S. — Charlie Haynes was born and raised in the big bungalow up the mountain from the wharf at Victoria Beach in Annapolis County.
And that’s where he was going to retire with wife Norma until Annapolis County knocked the house down and hauled it away last week.
They also took his garage and a third building that used to be a store. And it wasn’t because the place was an eyesore. Haynes spent countless hours and lots of money during the past 15 years fixing up all the buildings.
No, the county was afraid the place was going to slide down the mountain. Giant baskets of rock Haynes had spent tens of thousands of dollars on to prevent that from happening were no match for a deluge of rain in June that caused the mountain to start to slip. It’s about 25 metres down and there’s another house at the bottom.
“Without question this is a profoundly difficult circumstance,” said Annapolis County Warden Timothy Habinski. “It’s difficult to imagine what it would be like to be a homeowner placed in that circumstance.”
Back in June some of the baskets dropped two or three metres and trees were toppling and sliding down causing power lines to arc at the foot of the hill. But Haynes isn’t sure the house would have gone. He said an engineering report showed the basement being just a few feet above bedrock and the house had sat there for 70 years without moving – right up to the day it was torn down. But that few feet away from the bedrock might as well have been a mile.
MORE TIME
Right from the start Haynes had wanted more time to find a solution but when he failed to demolish it within the county’s time frame, the municipality took control in July under provisions of the Municipal Government Act and it was demolished on Aug. 20.
“From the municipality’s perspective, we’re required to do certain things in order to protect our residence, and in a circumstance like this particular one unfortunately we didn’t have the luxury of a lot of time,” the warden said. “We recognized there was a clear threat to people’s safety and to property posed by the unstable situation with the bank and the home that was there.”
“The bridgework was always being reconstructed by my dad,” Haynes said. “We had reworked the walls four years ago. We put thousands of dollars into that. We saw that it was failing last fall. I got an engineer down and a contractor and we were all set to go — and we missed it by three days because of the rain.”
“The property owner had an opportunity to test to see if there might be bedrock beneath the home that might imply that it was more stable than we had feared,” Habinski said. “Unfortunately, the results of the tests didn’t demonstrate that that was the case. In fact, the engineering report suggested the whole hill could come down at any time, particularly because it was susceptible to influence by heavy rain, and we know this has been a year where our weather has been really unpredictable.”
Habinski said the Municipal Government Act not only gives the county the authority to act in such cases, but makes it an obligation to do so. The county would be at fault if something happened and it hadn’t acted.
FAMILY HOME
Haynes, who lives in Dartmouth, inherited the house from his mother when she died in 2005. It had been built by his father.
“They never had any credit cards or anything like that, so it was all built as they went,” he said. “The first time they spent any time in it was Christmas Eve. They didn’t have any furniture. They remembered staying in front of the fire place there.”
Haynes is now in the house next door that used to belong to his aunt. It’s his now. After his aunt died it went up for auction and because he didn’t want to see the family lose it, he scraped together enough for a downpayment and bought it.
“We were just kind of hanging onto it,” said Haynes. “Now I’m glad I did. It wasn’t because we were rich or anything, that’s for sure.”
They were evicted on June 25. Norma Haynes received a call that Nova Scotia Power was disconnecting their electricity, and then they received a call from the county that they had to be out by 3:30 p.m. that day. That was at noon, but he was given an extra hour and a half when he told the county he had an engineer coming out that day — at 3:30 p.m. But in the end, it didn’t matter.
They had just a few hours to get their belongings out and everything ended up next door, mostly on the lawn, in a frenzied afternoon of moving.
“Then we got a demolition order on the 27th, a Thursday,” he said. They wanted him to demolish it within seven days. “A week later I was supposed to have it done and they took ownership.”
Haynes appealed to no avail.
“That was wicked. That was just like the death of a family. Just like somebody in the family died. I never felt anything like it.” Charlie Haynes
DEMOLITION
When the equipment arrived Aug. 20 to knock the buildings down, Haynes didn’t even know it was going to happen.
Haynes finds it hard to describe how he felt when he saw that excavator bucket go through the roof.
“That was wicked,” he said. “That was just like the death of a family. Just like somebody in the family died. I never felt anything like it.”
“No one takes any pleasure in a process like this,” said Habinski.
“My heart absolutely goes out to the families that have been impacted by this. But we have to take steps in order to ensure the safety of our residents.”
It’s not over yet for Charlie and Norma Haynes. Work has yet to be done to stabilize the hill. In the end, Charlie expects he’ll be stuck with a bill anywhere from $200,000 to $500,000.
“When something like this needs to be done really rapidly, the municipality pays the bill for that remediation and then a lien is placed against the property to reimburse taxpayers for the money that’s laid out,” Habinski said.
“In this circumstance, I’m not really sure what will happen with the property long term, but that’s the procedure. That’s what we have to do.”