A portion of a new retaining wall below United Concrete and Gravel Ltd. on Hodgson Road in Williams Lake collapsed sometime during the afternoon of Friday, Nov. 17.
City Coun. Sue Zacharias, who owns the company with her husband Paul, said the incident “happened while we were working on the wall on Friday with the excavator.”
Although United Concrete and Gravel does not build walls for other people, they were solely in charge of the construction of this wall on their property.
Zacharias said that the collapse was a construction-related incident while the excavator was on top of the wall and had nothing to do with the quality of the land the wall is situated on.
“The ground is good, there’s no problem there,” she noted. “We had our geotech work done when the building was started. We’re sitting on a lot of gravel and hard rock actually.”
The company is working with engineers and WorkSafe BC to investigate and orchestrate the clean-up and rebuilding of the damaged portion of the retaining wall. Zacharias says she hopes to see the reconstruction begin in the next couple of days.
She admitted it was “a bit of a scare,” and that the excavator operator had an injury to his shoulder as a result of the event but was back to work the next day.
This latest incident comes a year and a half after there was a devastating fire at the plant that destroyed the main building. They’ve been open during the re-building process post fire and want to thank the community for their continued support through the difficult times.