Landslide alarm leads residents to flee scores of harbour town homes

The exodus from more than 60 houses lying below the Bervie Braes in Stonehaven began shortly after midday following two "significant" landslips on the steep cliff face that towers over the Aberdeenshire town.

As the evacuation got under way, the town was also placed on full flood alert – only two months after the River Carron burst its banks, devastating more than 80 homes and businesses.

Aberdeenshire Council delivered sandbags for distribution to residents.

The council's decision to urge residents living in the harbour area to leave their homes came after the Bervie Braes were hit by separate landslips at either end of the cliff about 6am yesterday.

At one end a huge section of the cliff face slipped, and a former tollhouse at the opposite end of the braes was badly damaged when a mudslide crashed into the rear of it.

Aberdeenshire Council's chief executive Colin Mackenzie said: "We are very concerned about the risk of further slippage at the Bervie Braes and clearly we can't leave anything to chance.

"We have reached the point where we think the level of risk is at such a height that the residents should very seriously consider leaving those homes."

He said that more than 100 people in 65 properties had been contacted and urged to leave their homes. However, he added, residents could not be forced to quit their properties.

"I would stress that there is not a sign now of a large-scale slip at Bervie Braes," he said. "But nevertheless the monitoring that we have put in place has convinced us that this is now the time to move to that stage where we are alerting people that they should leave and find alternative accommodation."

Iain Gabriel, the council's director of transportation and infrastructure, said the threat level had now risen to "Level Four", the highest possible risk.

"Two different things can happen," he said. "One option is that the material on the slope itself simply washes down behind houses, and that's bad enough. The other thing that can happen is that the whole slope becomes unstable.

"You can have a major failure, where there is weakness well beneath the slope, and the whole thing then bulges out, and that clearly is a more catastrophic failure."

Jack Cowie, 71, who lives in New Street, said: "I have my bag backed and it's in the boot of the car and I'm ready to go.

"You are not going to get any warning if the whole slope comes down, so I am happy to leave – just in case."

But Jasper Slater, 69, who lives with his wife on the side of the braes above New Street, said: "I am not leaving, because I don't think anything is going to happen."