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NORTH SALT LAKE -- His hillside suddenly crumbled and slid last month. Friday, a North Salt Lake man made his case to the media and insisted it was not his fault.
Randy Tran's legal team says he was victimized by unscrupulous contractors, engineers and North Salt Lake building inspectors. It suggests not a single rock retaining wall in North Salt Lake was built to code.
Previously, the city told us everything on Tran's wall met standards, but the city manager can no longer comment because of the threat of a potential lawsuit.
Randy Tran's home still sits precariously above his unstable backyard as workers try to shore it up with thick steel plates anchored deeply in the ground -- an emergency fix. His lawyer, Tom Bowen, says the Tran family has been stressed by statements that the city is not at fault.
"He's put his life's savings into this house," says Bowen. "Now he sees that jeopardized. He doesn't feel safe here."
When the retaining wall failed April 19 and tons of debris tumbled into the backyards of two homes below, Tran feared his home would follow.
Investigator Lynn Packer presented the many alleged missteps since the wall was originally built in 1993.
"This is probably the worst design of any rock wall ever built in North Salt Lake," says Packer.
Packer argues "a combination of corrupt and incompetent engineers, contractors and building inspectors" led to a retaining wall that was "far from meeting code."
He asserts "a building inspector could have, and should have, detected and prevented the disaster at any stage, but didn't."
"This is not just a Tran problem, this is a neighborhood problem," says Bowen. "It's a North Salt Lake problem."
They argue these problems are widespread, and that North Salt Lake's code is not up to international building standards. They assert, "There is probably not a single rock retaining wall in North Salt Lake -- and there may be hundreds -- that were built to code."
Tran's team says work started without a permit, and city inspectors passed a non-compliant wall in 2003 and again when the wall was rebuilt in 2009.
It concludes a replacement wall that meets code may be too expensive and impossible to build on a slope that steep and a lot that small. So, the house may have to be razed.
"What we're trying to do is enter into discussions with some of the various parties," says Bowen, "and see if there's a way to get this resolved early on."
The Trans think the city, contractors and engineers should compensate them for the house so they can buy somewhere else. They still hope to resolve this with the city without going to court.
E-mail: jboal@ksl.com
