Dear Sir:
I lived in Kitsault when the mine first opened.
My husband and I were young and newly married at the time. Jim was an apprentice electrician and did a lot of the wiring in the pre-fab houses that were being built. He also worked at the mine.
Never seen anyone mention what I am going to share now; we had to leave Kitsault after about a year of living there because of a major disaster that occurred.
Most of the people at that time lived in trailers, they were just in the process of building the pre-fab housing.
Our brand new mobile home was put on a lower townsite, the new area for trailers, right by the water.
Apparently, years before this time there had been tests done, I believe called perc tests, to see if the area was stable enough to build a marina. The test came back negative.
Not sure how they decided to build the site by dumping tons of fill and earth to accommodate many trailers and people, when they knew that this site was not stable.
One day the cat operator jumped off his cat and was running from door to door of the trailers yelling, “Get Out! Run!”
I ran next door to grab the young Asian woman who lived with her husband in the next trailer.
We ran to higher ground. Thought it was an earthquake, the ground was shifting and breaking up.
We stood and watched as nearly all the trailers were washed out into the water.
Needless to say we were all in a state of shock.
No one was hurt thankfully. All the kids were at school at the time.
A strange thing that happened was that most of the domestic dogs and cats, a few days before this happened, all took off into the bush. Thought for sure that our cat was dead, as there was a lot of bears, wolverine, etc. in the area.
Was so happy, when a few days after the event, most of the cats and dogs came wandering back out of the bush! They must have all banded together in order to stay safe.
So, my experience living in Kitsault wasn’t a great one. It did teach me a good lesson, possessions mean nothing. People are what is important in this life.
My name at that time was Terry Waller, my then-husband’s name was Jim. Anyone else remember this?
Teresa Shore, Parksville, BC