3 homes evacuated after landslide in South Vancouver

Vancouver -

Three homes in South Vancouver were evacuated Thursday morning after a landslide near a construction site on Southwest Marine Drive.

Firefighters and police were called to the scene shortly after 9 a.m., according to Ken Gemmill, assistant chief of operations for Vancouver Fire Rescue Service.

Gemmill said the slide itself, which he described as "kind of an earth collapse," happened early in the morning.

Three properties on Tugboat Place - which is below the property where the slide began, closer to the bank of the Fraser River - had to be evacuated, Gemmill said.

"One of the lots, the whole backyard was encased in dirt and trees," he said.

Fortunately, no one was injured in the landslide.

Stephen Jang was one of the people evacuated. He told CTV News he heard a loud boom around 4:30 a.m. When he went outside, he saw the dirt and vegetation that had slid into his backyard, taking out a retaining wall along the way.

"It just seems that there was an erosion in the bank here and the tree and some of the soil shifted downwards and into my backyard," he said.

Jang said it appears that the slide happened in the greenbelt that separates his property from Casa Mia, the mansion on Southwest Marine Drive that's currently being converted into a long-term care home.

Gemmill said engineers from the City of Vancouver were called to assess the construction site and the three evacuated properties.

"The house above, which is on Southwest Marine Drive, is quite a large house," he said. "It's getting redeveloped now, so there's quite a lot of heavy construction going on on the lot. That may or may not have had bearing on why there was a collapse, but again, the City of Vancouver engineers are assessing the situation."

"The good thing is that everyone's safe," he added. "We got people out of their homes that were at risk."