NKY condo residents 'strongly recommended' to evacuate over landslide concerns

Three dozen condo residents are being told to temporarily relocate after engineers raised concerns about the risk of hillside slippage in the area.

Sanitation District No. 1 of Northern Kentucky had been working on a sanitary sewer upsizing project in the area.

Dozens of residents of the Woodland Hills Condominiums told WCPO they received a letter on their doorstep Friday night from an attorney representing their Homeowners Association.

“The excavation and construction work potentially caused a shifting in the hillside which has caused the recent cracks and other issues in the building,” reads the letter, signed by Tyler C. Arnzen. “The Association has been working with SD1 to monitor these ongoing changes with the ultimate goal of repairing any damage that has occurred to Building 30.”

Units have ground that has shifted several inches away from the building, walls that are bulging, corners no longer connected and cracks through the floor.

Engineers have been conducting tests in “recent months to determine whether there is active hillside slippage,” said Chris Cole, SD1 Director of Enterprise Communications.

Cole said results from those tests became available on Friday, which is when the structural engineer made a recommendation for residents to temporarily relocate.

In a letter from Pinnacle Engineering, Inc. addressed to SD1, structural engineer James Kipton Ping wrote “while the likelihood of a major landslide capable of causing the building to collapse is most likely remote, the soil is now known to be active, and we do not have data on the extent of that activity.”

Ping writes that the best course of action is to err on the side of caution: “Since collapse is not believed to be imminent, but just more likely than is considered an acceptable risk, it would be reasonable for the residents to return for very brief periods to retrieve additional items, but it is not recommended that they remain in the building for extended periods of time as they normally would.”

Residents Saturday were concerned about the lack of information on the timeline for how long they might be out of their homes. They said calls to SD1 and their HOA went unanswered.

“SD1 and the HOA are working on a solution that doesn’t create a financial hardship on the residents,” Cole told WCPO 9 in a statement, adding they are working to determine the next steps along with the cause of the slippage. “SD1’s primary concern is the safety of the residents.”

WCPO left two voicemail messages Saturday at the phone number left on the letter that residents received from their HOA’s attorney.

Andrew Rowan/WCPO

Many residents said that they were continuing to sleep in their units on Saturday night, awaiting news on whether they will get financial assistance for relocation.

“This is somebody’s fault,” condo owner Rosalie Savage said. “Somebody needs to step up and put us somewhere safe to live.”

Andrew Rowan/WCPO

Timothy Savage said the lack of communication beyond the letter has been frustrating.

“The people who live here who didn’t cause [any] of this… are feeling the pain of it,” he said.

In the meantime, residents like Brittany Evans are packing their belongings.

“We do have a child in the home, and God forbid something happened while we’re here,” she said. “So we’re just going to pack as much as we can, and you know, just wait to hear.”

“We’re all in shock. We don’t even know what’s going to happen next,” she said.