More than 15 years after a coroner’s investigation recommended that sa国际传媒 establish landslide risk tolerance levels for existing homes and future developments, the province has not done so.
The recommendation, one of eight to the province from the coroner’s report, was made after an examination of the death of 43-year-old Eliza Wing Mun Kuttner in a landslide on Jan. 19, 2005, that carried a District of North Vancouver home down a steep slope at 3:30 a.m.
Coroner Tom Pawlowski’s 2008 report found that potential landslides in the Berkley-Riverside area in the District of North Vancouver were both predictable and preventable, but the perception that there was an unacceptable risk was not recognized by government or the residents of the area.
Creating landslide risk tolerance levels, also called landslide safety levels, would help communities and experts determine whether, for example, it is safe to build along steep slope areas or where there are creeks, and whether changes are needed to protect existing homes.
The coroner’s report noted that both Hong Kong and Australia used landslide safety levels. In those regions, for example, the landslide risk tolerance level is set at one death in 100,000 per year for new development and one in 10,000 for existing development. The risk tolerance levels allow experts to run calculations to determine whether a development in a particular area would meet the safety level or how to mitigate risks in homes that have already been built.
The sa国际传媒 government did not respond to Postmedia questions put to them about why the province had not adopted the landslide safety levels or how it had responded to the eight coroner’s recommendations.
Concerns about landslide and debris flow risks were reignited this month after a mudslide swept through a home in Lions Bay along the Sea to Sky Highway corridor, killing two people.
Scott McDougall, a University of sa国际传媒 associate professor of engineering, says the hesitation to institute provincewide or sa国际传媒-wide landslide safety thresholds may be because if you do so, then you have to suddenly deal with homes that are above that threshold.
“That can be, politically, a difficult exercise and obviously really costly if you want to try to deal with it quickly,” he said.
McDougall, who leads the geo-hazards research team at UBC, said there is also an argument that landslide safety levels should be tailored on a local level, because different communities may have different risk tolerances, which may also explain the hesitation to set provincial or national levels.
In the absence of provincewide levels, communities are left to deal with the landslide safety levels on their own.
As Postmedia reported earlier, the Village of Lions Bay council has twice been warned in the past six years about landslide and debris flow risks but has not acted on those concerns.
In April 2022, a consulting geoscientist warned Lions Bay council that climate change could bring more landslides and debris flows of varying sizes, and laid out steps that could reduce risks.
In 2018, the Lions Bay’s council received a report from Cordilleran Geoscience that recommended closer scrutiny of slide hazards. The report was meant to help Lions Bay create development permit areas that would require geotechnical assessments at a defined risk level for new developments or when extensive renovations or property changes were carried out. The report recommended adopting the District of North Vancouver’s landslide safety policy, which set risk tolerance levels similar to those in Hong Kong and Australia after the 2005 fatal slide.
Following a landslide that killed two people in Lions Bay in 1983, work was done on creeks above the community to reduce landslide risk. Village officials have said that work — which included building debris catchment basins — was likely carried out and paid for by the province to protect the highway as it would have “bankrupted” the community.
The province has been unable to say exactly what landslide risk reduction work has been carried out along the Sea to Sky Highway corridor and how much it cost.
The work after 1983 did not include the area of Battani Creek where the recent Lions Bay slide originated.
Avi Kuttner, whose mother died in the 2005 District of North Vancouver landslide, believes the province should be doing more, providing increased funding and guidance to local communities, particularly given that climate change is exacerbating natural hazards such as landslides.
The burden keeps falling onto individuals and communities who are far from having the time, resources, or understanding to do anything about it, said Kuttner, who served as the interim leader of the Green party of sa国际传媒 for a year starting in November 2021.
“Landslides are also often seen as random which leads people to be even less likely to do preparatory work,” Kuttner said.
The coroner’s report into Eliza Wing Mun Kuttner’s death warned 16 years ago that population growth pressure would likely result in more residential developments encroaching onto steeper slopes in many parts of the province.
“Whenever development occurs on sufficiently steep ground, as was the case with the Berkley-Riverside Escarpment, some degree of risk to human life and property will always be present. Even though such risk cannot be fully eliminated, it is possible to assess the level of risk and apply appropriate control measures, if that level of risk is deemed unacceptable,” Pawlowski wrote in his report.
He also recommended the province develop a comprehensive landslide hazard management strategy focused on prevention and mitigation risk, consider establishing a legislated standard for how landslide assessments should be conducted and co-ordinate the development of provincial guidelines to assist local governments in recognizing when a risk assessment should be carried out.
The recommendations also called for the province to develop and administer standardized training and education for local governments and their staff in identification of landslide hazard risks and interpretation of risk assessments prepared by qualified professionals, develop an internet-based databank of landslide hazard information and create an inter-ministry technical working group to oversee implementation of the recommendations.
While then-sa国际传媒 public safety minister John van Dongen, a member of the sa国际传媒 Liberal government of the time, said the province would “facilitate discussions” on the recommendations, he noted that land development is largely the responsibility of local government.
In response to Postmedia questions, sa国际传媒 Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship officials also pointed to the authority and responsibilities held by local governments for landslide risks, including through official community plans and zoning.
In another response, provincial officials said the sa国际传媒 government had signed a contract with a firm in 2023 to collect high-resolution elevation data that will help make better land-use panning decisions, including managing landslide risks.
The coroner also recommended the Union of sa国际传媒 Municipalities help local governments to evaluate landslide risks and review reports, and to create a forum where local governments could share their knowledge.
But the UBCM said its executive was concerned about the role of local government in assessing landslide risk.
“The UBCM will work with the Municipal Insurance Association and the other professional associations concerned with this issue, once a provincial regulation is in place, to make governments aware of the measures they should consider in relation to landslide issues,” wrote Susan Gimse, the UBCM president at the time.
