Key takeaways: 

• The city urged residents of one household to leave their houses after two new slides occurred over the weekend.
• The parts around Jeckell Street and 6th Avenue have been fenced off because of a landslide. 
• The city says citizens are safe but recommends they take precautions. 

The City of Whitehorse urged that citizens of a downtown house leave their houses after two more landslides took place over the weekend.

“We have had discussions with them, and they have been cautious in staying at home,” said Mayor Laura Cabott Monday on CBC’s Yukon Morning.

One of the two landslides happened above Cliffside Park, near Jeckell Street, downtown. The park has been cordoned off since May 2021, when the last landslide occurred.

Saturday’s landslide saw remains fall from the escarpment, which runs along the west side of downtown, into the park, spilling over onto 6th Avenue, around a home. 

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The problem comes after the city began cleaning up a vast landslide late last month.

That landslide resulted in approximately 3,000 to 4,000 cubic meters of sand, silt, and clay that fell from the escarpment across Robert Service Way and the Millennium Trail and into the Yukon River.

The city said the present sliding is not driven by the recent building of a sheet piling wall along Robert Service Way. The wall is being made to mitigate the damage from any coming landslide in the area and allow officials to reopen the main thoroughfare into downtown, which was shut for weeks.

Cabott said three homes are “very close” to the latest slide area and potentially at stake. She said the city has talked to the owners, and two of the three houses are vacant. Another landslide took place late Friday night or before Saturday morning near Wood and Jarvis streets. 

Source – cbc.ca