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FOX 13 Investigates: Cleanup continues on Draper landslide as residents wait for plan

Posted at 9:59 AM, Dec 29, 2023
and last updated 2023-12-29 14:22:33-05

DRAPER, Utah — On April 22, Kirk Friedman heard a helicopter hovering above his house.

“Then my wife came upstairs,” Friedman said, “and she said, ‘The houses fell.’”

Friedman, his wife and his 93-year-old mother-in-law live five doors down from the two houses that slid down a hill in Draper’s Hidden Canyon Estates. Friedman’s home has held firm, but his backyard is now a work zone as the developer, Edge Homes, continues to stabilize the hillside.

READ: Utah geologist not surprised Draper homes tumbled down hillside

Edge has repurchased the four lots around the slide, according to property records. Residents like Friedman and city officials are waiting to hear whether Edge plans to try to sell homes on the parcels again.

“We haven't had that discussion about what their plans are,” said Draper City Manager David Dobbins. “So they haven't submitted any plans to us. So at this time, we're not aware of what they intend to do.”

An attorney for Edge said the company would respond to FOX 13’s inquiries after the holidays.

Under state law, Dobbins said, Edge still has the option to sell the two homes it repurchased that are still upright. And it could rebuild on the two lots where homes were destroyed.

All Edge would have to do is what it did the first time – have an engineering firm tell Draper that Edge has met the city’s building and geologic standards.

“We rely on their experts to tell us that it was built according to the plans that we reviewed,” Dobbins said.

Draper had ordered the families out of living in the two houses that slid almost seven months before the slide. No one was injured when the houses toppled into the canyon below. Edge has also repurchased the two houses adjacent to the slide.

The four families who lived in the homes either declined FOX 13’s recent request for an interview or did not respond.

The residents who remain in the area purchased their homes about the same time as the Friedmans – in 2021. What’s supposed to be a quiet mountaintop neighborhood has been filled with trucks, earthmoving equipment and the hums, beeps and roars they emit.

Friedman’s backyard is filled with a conveyor that takes soil and rocks from the hillside to the trucks waiting in the street. On Tuesday, a skid loader was moving dirt.

“It's been pretty hectic,” Friedman said. “They've been moving all of the dirt from the back out with literally hundreds of dump trucks coming here to this conveyor belt.”

Friedman said Edge is compensating him for the inconvenience, though he declined to say how much. His primary reason for granting the access, Friedman said, was to help his neighbors.

“There are times when I get fairly angry about it,” Friedman said. “There are times when I wish Edge was doing a little bit more and a little faster.”

Dobbins said much of the work done thus far has been temporary measures; the long-term fixes will be made when the weather improves.

Friedman says Utah legislators need to learn a lesson from the landslide and give cities more say over development.

“Utah is very developer-friendly,” Friedman said. “And this is one of the cases where that's kind of bitten people.”

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