City engineer Taylor Eshpeter told city council at its meeting Monday officials estimate 3,000 to 4,000 cubic metres of material came down in last Saturday’s mudslide.

Saturated soil is being cited as the cause of the slide, which has closed part of Robert Service Way.

There’s no word yet regarding when it’s expected the roadway and the Millennium Trail will be cleared and opened again.

The slide went right across Robert Service Way, took out the White Pass and Yukon Route railway tracks, guard rail and a light standard, he said.

There are eyewitness accounts that nobody was caught in the slide.

There are, Eshpeter said, accounts of how vehicles just missed being hit by it.

He said the city was notified shortly after 3 p.m., and steps were taken immediately to prevent access to the area.

There has been constant communication with the Yukon government, he added.

Eshpeter told council the site appears to be still active at this time.

The lower half of that section of escarpment let go, but the upper half did not, he said.

Eshpeter said the city has retained a landslide specialist to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the situation.

Right now there is reason to believe it’s still moving, but they do not know for sure, he told council.

The city engineer said they don’t know how much it’s still shifting, if indeed it is still moving.

Mayor Laura Cabott told the Star early this afternoon officials are hoping to have more information by Wednesday to share with the public.

The specialist is working remotely with a team of local engineers to conduct an assessment, she said.

The team is to setting up monitoring equipment today but they have identified some tension cracks in the escarpment that indicate the area is still active and remains high-risk.

The cause of the slide, she said, is saturated soil as a result of the high amounts of precipitation the city has seen in the last couple of years, including this year.

Cabott noted the landside specialist is familiar with the Whitehorse escarpment.

The city has set aside money in this year’s capital budget to assess the escarpment from one end to the other, she pointed out.

On Monday evening, members of city councillor expressed how grateful they were that nobody was injured in the mudslide.

Eshpeter said they hadn’t done a geological assessment of the area in recent years.

Coun. Jocelyn Curteanu noted the city had been doing some work in the area, and she wondered if that may have contributed to conditions that triggered the slide.

Eshpeter said the activity was simply routine work clearing debris at the bottom of the escarpment that has sloughed down, just as crews do every year.

The city, he said, is monitoring traffic as a result of the road closure.

The city is asking residents to do what they can to lessen the traffic headed downtown through vehicle pooling, and using Whitehorse Transit services or active transportation.

The closure has affected transit route number five, as well as school busing, he told council.

Three to 4,000 cubic metres of dirt is roughly equivalent to 300 to 400 dump truck loads.