'A fair offer'

Jim Dominaux has owned his home in Daniel's Harbour for roughly 33 years.

By the March 31st deadline, he and 22 other home and property owners in the community will have relocated to safer ground.

"I got no other choice, that's what they told me," Mr. Dominaux said.

The Department of Municipal Affairs called meetings with the town council and affected residents in Daniel's Harbour Nov. 16 to inform the people there the government has extended the landslide safety zone and will compensate property owners by buying the homes at replacement value.

Mr. Dominaux said the provincial government's offer is fair.

"It hasn't really sunk in yet, but in the next few days it probably will. Where I'm living now, I've been living there for 30-something years," he said, adding that he raised two sons there. "Especially where I lived, it was a great place to live. My house is 24x28, rooms downstairs, and then I got a big shed, almost as big as my house, and I got three blocks of land. It was a good spot."

The provincial government had implemented safety zones after landslides occurred in Daniel's Harbour in 2006, impacting 10 properties.

Mayor Ross Humber said the compensation is the same as in 2006 except that the owners don't have to leave their homes immediately.

"That's fair," Mr. Humber said. "The only difference between this (offer) and the last one, I am of the understanding, is that the residents today can stay in their homes until they're ready to shift into their new homes, as opposed to the other homeowners who had to shift out and be gone."

Daniel's Harbour residents are still reeling from shock rather than feeling the sting of disappointment and loss, he added.

"The town council and the residents, we're still basically trying to get our head around it yet. You can't believe there's such a large area involved. We can't say we didn't expect something, but not to this magnitude."

The provincial government will hire an appraiser to visit the homes over the next few weeks.

Following the assessment, the government will come back with the offers on the homes, between January and March.

Construction will begin in the spring on the new homes.

Acting municipal affairs minister Tom Hedderson said, after reviewing the consultants' analysis of the situation, the provincial government was forced to take action.

"They pretty well guarenteed us that sometime in the future we're going to have future slides," Mr. Hedderson said. "So having foremost in our mind public safety, I'm convinced that we had no other choice than to extend the safety zone to the parimeters that we established."

He added: "There was some emotions there; these are family homes, their children grew up there, some of them grew up there second generation. But I got a sense from them, and the feedback that we got during that meeting, that this was a fair offer, more than a fair offer in some cases because we never went to market value, we went to replacement value, according to today's dollars."

The government also visited Trout River, which suffered a landslide last June, to hold meetings with the six properties owners affected by that community's safety zone.