Eden’s BUPA aged care facility remains closed and the area around it cordoned off with yellow and black caution tape. BUPA has not indicated a date for the building’s reopening.
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As the Magnet went to press there was evidence of cleaning activity inside the building from where over 50 residents were moved following the severe storm in the early hours of Sunday, January 31.
There has been considerable speculation about the flooding of the BUPA building, which sparked a full scale emergency operation to move the frail and aged residents, some of whom suffer from dementia.
However, Bega Valley Shire Council’s general manager, Leanne Barnes, was adamant that it was only stormwater flooding the building.
“This was a stormwater event, not a sewer event; there was not sewage running through the building,” she said.
Council is working with BUPA to establish the cause of the flooding, Ms Barnes said.
“We are still looking into the actual reasons why it happened.”
Ms Barnes said survey staff had attended the site and had looked at the infrastructure and drainage. The Environmental Protection Agency has also visited.
Ms Barnes has indicated there may be issues relating to “design and engineering on the site” and said that council was waiting on reports that would give a fuller picture.
Work on the building was started in 2008 by Croft Developments. Earlier reports in the Magnet state that one metre of clean waste was used to raise the level of the site and that 670 poles were sunk six metres into the ground in order to provide suitable foundations.
This latter point would indicate that firmer ground was not accessible closer to the surface.
After the facility had been open for about 3.5 years, owner Innovative Care sold it to BUPA, which acquired it in late 2012.
Speaking earlier, a BUPA spokeswoman said the company expected temporary accommodation arrangements would “unfortunately need to be in place for a number of weeks, not days”.