BELLEVUE, Wash. — Seven Bellevue homes are still under an evacuation order after a water main break and landslide Monday.
City officials say it’s just too dangerous to let people travel back and forth in front of the partially collapsed home in the 5000 block of 139th Street Southeast.
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“We don’t have a definitive timeline but I’d certainly like to see it progress as quickly as possible,” Schrader said. He said the city is working with the homeowners’ private insurance to get that work done.
Bellevue Development Services Building Director, Gregg Schrader, said the house destroyed by the slide must first be stabilized – whether that’s shoring it up, or a partial demolition – before people can be allowed to freely travel back and forth in front of the home.
>> 17 homes evacuated after Bellevue home slides, collapses
The house is still at nearly a 45 degree angle, teetering over the residential road.
“Look at that thing, that’s scary,” said DeeDee Walsh, a neighbor who was evacuated but has since been able to return. Almost the residents who live south, or downhill of the home, have been able to return.
“I’m very afraid of this yellow tape still here. I was hoping to be able to come back to the house,” said Jieling Zhang. “Most concerning is I don’t know what’s the root cause (of the slide),” she said.
People want to know - did the water main break happen first, triggering the slide? Or did the landslide cause the water main to break?
Bellvue city officials said Tuesday afternoon that they are only starting to figure out how to answer that question.
“In general, we are going to be hiring geotechnical experts to do an assessment of the slope. The actual analysis is being scoped out right now,” said Linda De Boldt, Bellevue Utilities Assistant Director. “We don’t have details quite yet.”
KIRO7′s Deedee Sun also asked the city, if the water main triggered the slide, whether the City of Bellevue would be financially responsible for the damage.
“That’s a good question - I’m not able to answer that. Our focus now is to initiate an investigation into what happened in that slide, and there are a number of different possibilities. Regarding financial responsibility that’s going to be assessed in the coming weeks and months,” De Boldt said.
“Hopefully not the owners - their insurance the city or someone. Because that’s going to be millions of dollars to replace that home,” said Walsh, a neighbor.
Most homeowners insurance policies do not cover landslides.
John and Barb Surdi addressed the concerns on Monday.
“I called the agent already and he said your structure is insured, but not the ground,” John Surdi said.
It means the path forward is not clear.
“It’s going to be a long road. And meantime we don’t have a house. We don’t’ have a place to live,” Surdi said.
There is a GoFundMe for the Surdi’s, that’s already raised about $84,000 as of Tuesday evening.
A Washington state geologist with the Department of Natural Resources said a basic evaluation on Monday did not discover any further landslide risk in the neighborhood.
“We didn’t find there were any signs of landslide activity besides what had already failed. Of course with rain in the forecast there could be smaller failures along that bluff,” said Kate Mickelson, Landslide Hazards Program Manager at Washington Geological Survey.
The City of Bellevue said work to start stabilizing the collapsed home could start as early as within a few days.