Slip ‘an accident waiting to happen’
Residents near a newly-formed slip in an Auckland car park say they are disappointed it took so long to be taken seriously.
The back half of Birkenhead’s public Rawene car park slipped down a gorge on Sunday night and has continued to slip since.
Claire Balfour, the chairwoman of the body corporate of the nearby Mokoia Apartments, said residents were concerned about the significant drop in the car park when it first appeared almost three weeks ago but it seemed impossible to get the full attention of the Auckland Council or Auckland Transport.
She said the asphalt had originally been poured onto unstable land without a retaining wall and was ‘‘an accident waiting to happen’’.
While the residents now have an AT liaison, Balfour said they felt they hadn’t been paid much attention until the slip occurred.
‘‘We’re disappointed it’s taken so long, we had to be persistent,’’ she said. ‘‘We’re just trying to get some assurance that when [the apartments] were built, the people did their jobs properly and built on good foundations.’’
Auckland Transport has defended its management of the car park. Chief infrastructure officer Greg Edmonds said the car park had washed away into the gorge below it following the ‘‘pretty significant rains’’ over the last 12 months.
Edmonds said AT had been monitoring the site for 12 months and it took appropriate action when the crack appeared, closing part of the car park and fencing it off for public safety.
He again rejected that vibrations from a near-by development may have played a part, saying the ‘‘initial view’’ was that it was more because of the fact it was built in the 1960s on ‘‘uncontrolled fill’’.
He said the slip was a natural process and the only thing to do was wait and see where the slipping would end and where the solid ground was.
The rear section of the car park was cordoned off by Auckland Transport for safety reasons on September 20, following the sub- sidence of an already-existing crack. Now, parts of that cordon lay in the ditch below the car park, alongside large slabs of tarmac with the white car park lines still visible on them.
Local workers who have been observing the situation say it was ‘‘ludicrous’’ that drilling that ‘‘shook’’ nearby buildings, would not cause issues with the car park.
Birkenhead worker Brett Norris said he had been in Birkenhead for 30 years. ‘‘I knew if there was significant shaking it would compromise it [the car park].’’
AT said yesterday it has had an engineering geologist on site.