The Postal Service has stopped delivering to homes on Northwest 16th Terrace in Cape Coral, the street where the city is already drilling into a sinking road, and is holding the mail for collection at the Cape Coral North branch

The United States Postal Service has stopped delivering mail to homes on Northwest 16th Terrace in Cape Coral, telling residents through a statement that safety issues on the route are behind it, and is holding the affected mail for collection at a branch about four miles away.

In a statement given to Gulf Coast News, the Postal Service said that the safety of its employees and customers is its priority, that there are pending safety issues which have temporarily affected mail delivery to a few of the residents on this route, and that local management is currently aware of it. It said that in the interim all mail and packages for affected customers will be available for pickup at the Cape Coral North branch at 1441 Southwest 4th Street, Cape Coral, 33991, giving the hours as Monday to Friday 8.30 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Saturday 9 a.m. to noon. It apologised for the inconvenience.

The statement does not say what the safety issues are, which addresses fall inside the affected group, or when normal delivery resumes.

Thomas Miller, a resident of the street, told the station that other carriers were still coming. His words, as reported, were that UPS does, FedEx does, Waste Pro does, everybody except the post office. Miller, who is a disabled veteran, said he receives his medications and all his medical things from the Department of Veterans Affairs through the mail and that the service was cut off.

Sheila Miller said the household was never told why the mail stopped. She described putting mail in the box with the flag up, expecting it to be collected, and realising after two days of nothing that there was a problem.

The street is the same one this desk wrote about on August 25, when the City of Cape Coral confirmed that the roadway in front of a property on Northwest 16th Terrace had settled noticeably and engaged a geotechnical consultant to drill subsurface borings into the street to establish the cause. Gulf Coast News reports that the city has placed barricades near that home.

The Postal Service has not linked the stoppage to the road. Its statement refers only to pending safety issues and offers no detail. The Millers said they live far from the affected stretch and feel it is unfair that their mail service has been caught up in it. The cause of the road settlement remains undetermined by the city that is investigating it.

Residents on the route who are waiting on prescriptions or other items they cannot easily replace should treat them as held for collection at the Cape Coral North branch rather than as lost. The pickup hours above are the ones the Postal Service gave for these customers, and residents may want to call ahead, since published lobby hours for that branch differ on Saturday opening.

There is no primary document behind this brief. A delivery suspension of this kind produces no public notice, order or filing, and the Postal Service position exists so far only as a statement given to a newsroom on request. The account here rests on that statement and on one outlet's reporting, both credited below. What the safety issues are, and whether they have anything to do with the road settlement on the same street, remains unstated by the only body that can say.

Reporting: Muhammad Abdul Qawee, Gulf Coast News.