Community

‘I really worry about what’s gonna happen when we get the next big rain’

WHITE HALL - Forecasters are calling for a chance of thunderstorms today.

Forecasters are also calling for a chance of thunderstorms Friday.

And, while they're at it, those same forecasters are predicting the same for Saturday and Sunday.

Jarrod Petersavage can tell you all about it - even if he'd rather not.

That's because he's now finding himself standing on shaky ground, on Nellie Lane in White Hall.

Unstable ground, anyway.

At the top of the once-wooded enclave in the south Marion County community just past Fairmont is where the house sits that Petersavage, an engineer, just finished refurbishing for his mother, Virginia.

Mrs. Petersavage, 76, a nurse in the family's native Pittsburgh, was looking forward to retirement in the Mountain State, where she would be closer to her son and grandchildren.

She bought the place a couple of years back. It needed lots of work, but when your kid's an engineer that's not an issue.

"This was gonna be perfect," Jarrod Petersavage said.

"Nurses work hard. She was finally going to be able to retire. She wasn't gonna have a mortgage to deal with."

The last of the carpet went down two weeks ago and a son happily called his mom.

"I said, 'You're move-in ready, Mom.'" Then, the driveway started moving.

Literally.

An underground coal seam fire that has plagued Nellie Lane for decades is the culprit behind the seismic shift.

The incendiary simmering broke through last summer when nearby Pleasant Valley Volunteer Fire Department was dispatched on a smoke investigation call.

Flames could be spied through a fissure in the corner of the parking lot of Winston’s Wheels and Tires, a business over from Nellie Lane.

Bluish smoke, sulphur-tinged air and asphalt hot to the touch were the byproducts.

According to archives from the Division of Environmental Protection, the fire was believed to have originated in the former Kuhn Mine No. 1, which is tapped into the Pittsburgh coal seam.

Said seam lies beneath 53 counties in three Appalachian states. Pleasant Valley firefighters recorded a surface temperature of 700 degrees - hot enough to melt lead.

The DEP's remediation that followed only added to the problem, Petersavage said.

All the vegetation on the hillside behind the home was removed, over worries it could catch fire from the subterranean heat source.

However, that also meant taking out all those root systems, too, Petersavage said.

Root systems, he said, which were keeping the hillside anchored.

After the first slippages, the yard of the house, and those of three neighboring dwellings were starting to go, also.

Now, cracks are appearing in the house's walls, and Petersavage won't even go inside.

"It's not safe," he said.

Last week, the owners of the tire business filed suit against the state DEP and a host of contractors involved in the remediation.

Petersavage has also contacted local lawmakers who are also attempting to talk to the DEP for definitive answers and plan to correct.

Same for Gov. Patrick Morrisey, he said.

While the earth continues to slip away at his mother's house, there has been no movement from either entity.

"And now we've got the weather report," he said. "I really worry about what's gonna happen when we get the next big rain."