Investigation still continuing more than a month after couple were killed in their home.
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The B.C. government says the cause of a deadly Lions Bay landslide remains unknown.
“The cause of the slide … is still under investigation,” B.C.’s Ministry of Water, Lands and Resource Stewardship said Tuesday in an email from public affairs officer Akriti Tyagi.
In a written statement sent to Postmedia, Vestergaard said he had received a letter dated Dec. 20, 2024, with a provincial file number “after the source of the slide was determined to be of natural causes.” That letter, he said, stated there was a visit on Dec. 18 that determined his dam was intact and had retained its reservoir, while the source of the slide was below the reservoir.
Ministry officials did not respond to a request to provide documents from the Dec. 18 visit or their communications with Vestergaard. They said the province has been communicating with Vestergaard.
Vestergaard has also declined to release the letter sent to him, providing to Postmedia what he said were excerpts.
Vestergaard has provided documentation to Postmedia showing work ordered by the province to reduce slope failure risks at the reservoir was signed off by a professional geoscientist as “satisfactorily completed” in 2015. He said he spent $400,000 on slide prevention, engineering and remediation on the reservoir and an access road about a decade ago.
Vestergaard has also said he has provincial approval and easements for access roads to his private property and the reservoir.
A Postmedia site visit on Jan. 16 showed that the highest point of a debris flow on the morning of Dec. 14 was on a steep slope that starts below the reservoir.
On Tuesday, Vestergaard met Metro Vancouver officials on his property high above Lions Bay, where the officials went to look at the reservoir. The small reservoir, about six by eight metres, is meant to provide water to Vestergaard’s private property.
No home has been built on the private property that covers the equivalent of about 4½ city blocks.
The reservoir, its access road and some of the roads to Vestergaard’s private property are just outside the boundaries of the Village of Lions Bay, in electoral area A of the Metro Vancouver regional district.
Metro Vancouver spokesman Greg Valou said regional officials visited the site primarily to better understand the current state of the area after the landslide and to take photographs for its records.
On Tuesday, Vestergaard said the province has told him he has to have an engineer examine the reservoir in three months to identify if there may be future issues. During those three months, he says he must make a weekly visual inspection of the reservoir, take photos and keep a diary.
Previously, Vestergaard said, he had to have the reservoir inspected after major storms.