OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Thursday 9.00pm.
A SAFETY system is needed that will warn of possible rockfalls and mudslides on Cape Town’s most scenic coastal drive, an engineering geologist told the Cape Town High Court on Thurday.
Fredrick Stapelberg testified in a civil claim of more than R4- million against the Cape Metropolitan Council by disabled former factory manager Noel Graham, whose neck was crshed when a landslide hit his car on Capman’s Peak Drive June 26, 1994. Graham has been left a quadriplegic as a result of the accident.
Judge WA van Deventer said his impression was that Chapman’s Peak Drive was an exceptionally high risk road.
Stapelberg’s testimony that the risk increased with the winter rains and that a safety concrete retaining wall would be too costly, prompted the judge to remark: “Perhaps that road shouldn’t have been built at all.”
Road monitor Charles Lamb told the court traffic officers had twice reported rockfalls on Chapman’s Peak on the day Graham was injured. He had encountered a major landslide not far from the one which crushed Graham’s car. He immediately closed off the road to traffic, he told the court. The hearing continues on Tuesday.