Seventeen families at the Waterford Forest apartments near High HouseRoad got the news that rains had severely undermined a terraced retainingwall. spent the weekend packing up and getting out of their homes.
The owners of the property decided on Friday to clear the building as soon as possible.
Residents had the weekend to pack up and go. That left them scramblingto find boxes and packing material, and to gather their lives up for themove.
Randy Rice, one of the tenants, pointed to the site where theground has sunk substantially over the past few months. A crack firstappeared in March, but then the rains made matters worse -- bad enough tocrush a chain link fence that had been in the path of the mud. Still, Ricesaid, the move is a hassle.
Even though it took months for the retaining wall to finally give way,residents say they can't believe they were only given a day's notice tomove.When they came Friday and told us it had to be this weekend and we hadto be out by Monday, we told them that was ridiculous.
According to Operations Manager Kim Caldwell, "If we had had any morenotice,certainly we would've gone with that. But after the rains, nobody had the samecomfort level."
SCG Realty Services took over the property in the fall, but thecompany says it wasn't aware of the problems until recently.But when engineers and the City of Cary told the management company theproperty looked unsafe, SCG made the decision to move.
SCG plans to have the problem fixed within a few months and hopes to havepeople moving in by spring.
SCG Realty Services paid for the moves and offered many of therelocating tenants discounts on other apartments in the complex. Twofamilies made it an even bigger move -- they had had plans to move intotheir own houses, and just went directly on to their brand-new addresses.
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