The Ground Under the Nursery in Centar Slipped Enough to Need a 3.2-Metre Wall: the Children Have Been Moved to Another Building

At the "Panorama" nursery in the Municipality of Centar, a reinforced concrete retaining wall 3.20 metres high is being built, together with its foundation structure. The reason is soil erosion. The children from the building have been moved to "Beli Mugri" while the work is under way.

The structure is divided into six separate sections and is being built entirely from reinforced concrete. Behind the wall goes a drainage layer of crushed stone wrapped in geotextile, and at foundation level a PVC drainage pipe 300 millimetres in diameter, through which groundwater and infiltrated water will be carried away.

That is the technical description. What it says in plain language is that beneath a nursery full of children, the ground slipped enough to require a three-metre wall and an entire drainage installation to hold it.

Where the problem was before it became a project

The mayor of Centar, Goran Gerasimovski, says this is a serious and necessary construction intervention and that the children were transferred to another building even before the works began. "The safety of children is always our first priority and that is why we make no compromises when it comes to infrastructure interventions like this," he said.

Moving them is the right decision and deserves to be stated as such. What is not stated is when the erosion was noticed, how long the children stayed in the building while the ground was moving, and whether there is any regular monitoring of ground stability beneath the municipality's nurseries - or whether the response only comes once the movement is visible to the naked eye.

The Municipality of Centar says it will continue investing in childcare facilities, with an emphasis on their safety and stability. That is the formulation every municipality uses after every intervention of this kind.

The difference between prevention and repair is in who pays for it. Repair is paid by the budget. So is prevention, but far more cheaply - provided somebody considers it their job before the ground starts moving.