City officials still unclear on responsibility for Charles Village landslide | VIDEO

Lee Truelove describes watching the pavement give way beneath several cars parked on 26th Street between Charles and St. Paul. (Algerina Perna/Baltimore Sun video)

One week after the collapse of a large retaining wall between CSX Transportation railroad tracks and East 26th Street in Charles Village, city officials said they still had not determined who was responsible for the wall or who will pay the cost to repair it.

Officials said they are still poring over decades of documents, including a 1998 agreement between the city and CSX showing that, at least once in the past, they cooperated to repair retaining walls in the neighborhood.

Responsibility for last week's wall failure, which dumped half the block and eight cars onto the railroad tracks below and forced residents of 19 homes to evacuate the area, has been a key question. Repair costs could top $1 million, and residents said they had raised concerns about cracks and sinking asphalt along the street for years.

The 1998 agreement, released in response to a request from The Baltimore Sun, shows the city and the railroad split an estimated $880,000 bill for repairs to a stretch of retention walls just a couple of blocks from last week's collapse and along the same string of railroad cuts that runs parallel to East 26th Street.

CSX and city property lines intersect across the city.

The company could not be reached to comment Wednesday.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Transportation Director William Johnson said at a news conference at the site Wednesday that many questions, including who should maintain the wall, remained unanswered. The mayor said she was focused on helping displaced residents, and that she directed city agencies to work quickly to find answers.

Johnson said new ground-penetrating radar testing of St. Paul and North Charles streets, which run past and perpendicular to East 26th, showed no major structural concerns, and that survey crews continue to monitor any movement on East 26th.

Radar testing would not be conclusive on East 26th, he said, because the radar waves interacting with the uneven, exposed-dirt slope of the street would yield unclear images.

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City officials still unclear on responsibility for Charles Village landslide | VIDEO