Business disruption follows sinkhole damage in St Helier, Jersey

A skin therapist, Penny Downes, who works as a beautician at Dynamic Health on Clarendon Road in St Helier, Jersey, has had to cancel over 50 client appointments. This occurred after she was evacuated from her business premises on Wednesday due to a sinkhole that appeared in the La Pouquelaye area. The sinkhole formed under the road as a result of a burst water main on Rouge Bouillon. Jersey Water stated that this main was repaired on Wednesday afternoon. On Wednesday, the government indicated that authorities continued to be “concerned” regarding the integrity of the affected building and the damage sustained by the road. Ms Downes commented, “Not ideal for the busiest week of the year for the skincare and beauty industry, but we’re grateful to be safe, all of the agencies that helped us yesterday were magnificent.” She further explained that upon their arrival at Dynamic Health that morning, she and her colleagues observed “internal structural damage,” which included approximately 15 cracks within the building. Katie Toates, the proprietor of Dynamic Health, described the preceding day as “a huge stress.” She stated, “This is an old building, we do have a few little cracks from time to time, but I’ve never seen anything like this – the engineer when he first came out said this is the sort of cracking he would expect in a building that has been neglected for 20 years.” She added, “This is stuff that has happened in less than 24 hours, so it has been quite difficult to get our heads around.” Ms Downes recounted, “At that point we hadn’t gone down to the basement, so we didn’t know we’d got a problem underneath the building, and I wasn’t even aware that the water main had gone either in the Rouge Bouillon Le Pouquelaye area.” She noted that the situation “started to unravel” once they discovered the basement was flooding. “There was obviously devastation outside the clinic as well, so we put two and two together, made four, and started to be evacuated,” Ms Downes explained. She also praised Jersey Water, describing their assistance as “particularly amazing.” On Wednesday, the utility company issued an apology, stating that personnel were evaluating the damage to a nearby building to “understand the cause” of the sinkhole. The Government of Jersey announced that Clarendon Road was accessible southbound in the direction of town, with diversions still active around the closed section of the road. It further noted that the Infrastructure and Environment department was evaluating the necessary repairs to the sinkhole, with additional updates expected on Friday after 13:00 GMT. Ms Downes expressed that despite being “in an uncertain moment,” she and the other business proprietors at Dynamic Health were “very, very hopeful” of resuming operations shortly. Martin Skyba, a manager at Jersey Water, reported that the company had excavated the site and identified the location of the burst when repair work commenced. He stated, “We repaired that really quickly, so took about an hour or so to get repaired, but during that repair we noticed some damage to the property opposite so we quickly contacted the property owner, made them aware of it and made them understand that they needed to evacuate the building.” He added, “Our focus now is to make sure that we can get it fixed and get the road reinstated and opened as quickly as possible.” Mr Skyba indicated that additional road repairs would be necessary once the adjacent property was deemed safe, and that the company currently had no timeline for when the road would be reopened to the public.