Neighbours of Balcón al Mar have started a collection of signatures on Change.org to ask the City Council for “the total and immediate stoppage of all works” on cliffs that pose a danger by detachment.
After the storm last month, large boulders of stone have blocked C/ Pierre Boulez, the only exit road serving more than 45 homes
These rugged areas of Javea are putting the safety of residents at risk. Luckily, the April storms did not cause loss of life or human injury but the boulders in the middle of the road were of considerable size, and could well have fallen on a person or property.
On April 22, during the heavy rains, there was the collapse and landslide on the slope in C/Bela Bartok. Large blocks of stone also left C/Pierre Boulez blocked, causing chaos for more than 45 homes, occupied, in high season, by approximately 150 inhabitants. Residents, including people over 80 and children, were “totally isolated and defenceless.” For several days, as the petition statement tells, “the neighbours had to walk up the mountain to buy food in the nearest local, small supermarket”
That same day there were also huge landslides, with rocks about 2 meters in diameter, on nearby C/Joseph Haydn. Those of huge dimension, fell just under a plot currently under construction and landed just a metre away from a house on C/Halcón, inhabited at that time by the owners and their young children.
“We are grateful that there were no fatalities, but I understand that it is the City Council’s duty to take this as a serious warning of a tragedy of unsuspected proportions and put procedures in place to avoid it,” says Ana Fernández , who compiled the statement and who, at the same time, warns that a greater landslide of the plot undergoing works on the cliff of Haydn could leave “35 houses destroyed and completely underground” Plus, as she points out, the rock that came off that “lucky day” left a crater 2.3 metres in diameter and between 10 and 15 cm deep in the road.
Demand protection of the cliffs from construction companies
The neighbours complain that the consistory does not require, before the start of any construction, the protection of the affected slopes, neither do they request a study on soil and slope stability in the areas.
“Those of us who have lived in the area for years can see how they are replacing the traditional chalets, built above ground and walled around the perimeter of their plots, by open-style fashionable constructions with several levels and with basements and pools practically on the edge of weakened cliffs that are totally inadequate and unsafe for the type of soils in this area.”
In addition, in the case of the new construction in C/Haydn, advertised on the developer’s website as Villa Danna for 2.5 million euros, the signatories complain that they have carried out excavations with inadequate machinery that in some points reach about 8m. deep, just 2m from the edge of the cliff. All this, in spite of the signs of ‘risk in the road by landslides’ that were already established there 5 years ago.
Finally, they ask the City Council to remove the remains of the rubbles from the roads, as well as branches of fallen trees. “In the face of summer, they will be dry, increasing the risk of fires and, once again, blocking the only way of evacuation.”
Sign the petition via the link below
