The little digger that couldn’t finally surfaced Wednesday morning after being trapped underground for months in the Old Mill neighbourhood while trying to excavate a new sewer system.
A crew of eight workers from a private contractor hired by the city dug up the digger that had been stuck beneath Old Mill Drive near Bloor Street West for the past year and a half.
Using a crane and pulley system, the machine’s tail section was carefully hoisted out and placed onto a flatbed truck.
The boring machine had been split in two for removal, with head extracted a couple of weeks ago.
In all, it was a complicated rescue operation, according to Gord Perks, councillor for the area, especially as it was carried out in a flood zone.
“We had to have people digging by hand and to do that, you have to stabilize their work area,†he said. “This meant things like injecting concrete pillars into the ground.â€
City engineering said crews hand dug tunnels to the trapped machine to free it before hoisting it out with the crane.
“The best analogy is this was like building an airplane while you’re in flight,†said Perks.
The city said the wayward digger, which cost about $3 million — and possibly as much as $25 million to rescue — will be inspected to determine whether it can be restored or salvaged.
“I’m pretty sure it’s toast,†Perks said. “The damage is extensive.â€
Before the start of Wednesday’s council meeting, Mayor Olivia Chow joked that the digger should maybe be gold plated and put on display at City Hall, considering how much it has cost the city.
“It came up for discussion while we were talking about budget,†said Chow. “That machine was stuck in my mind.â€
Chow said the city will publish a full report on the incident.
The boring machine was lowered into the ground in spring 2022 by a city-contracted company, aiming to grind a tunnel for a storm sewer pathway to help make homes in the area flood-proof.
Instead, the machine got stuck just seven metres short of the exit shaft, ensnared on a spaghetti of steel wires called tie-backs left underground from nearby condo foundation work.
The final costs for the machine’s retrieval have yet to be announced.
A spokesperson said the city was committed to implementing measures to prevent such a thing from happening again, including “working to revise utility mapping processes to include additional information such as tie-backs.â€
Perks described the long-awaited extraction as “frustrating and horrible†for residents, with seemingly endless road closures and traffic problems, as well as problems with access to private property and noise from the operations.
With the tunnel borer out of the way, Perks said the storm sewer project can continue, adding that the current estimate is that the project will be completed by the end of the year.
“The frustrating thing is we were very, very close to finishing the tunnel for the new bypass (in 2022), which was necessary to stop basement flooding,†he said.
With files from David Rider.
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