Community

Marion coal seam still burning and nearby residents are still (literally) unsettled

WHITE HALL - It's not easy when you're 76 years old and still showing up for work every day, Virginia Petersavage says.

Especially when you're a nurse.

And your arm's in a cast.

And you thought you would have retired by now.

"My body's broken, too," she said Wednesday with a rueful chuckle and nod to the injury she suffered on the job several weeks ago. "I'm tired and worn out."

With, technically, no place to go.

Petersavage, a Pittsburgh native, was happily looking forward to retiring this summer and moving to West Virginia and the south Marion County town of White Hall, so she could be closer to her son, Jarrod Petersavage and his family.

"Was," is the word.

That was before the front yard of the house atop Nellie Lane began slipping and cracks began etching the foundation and spider-webbing the walls, giving an out-of-kilter cast to the ranch house.

"It's worse today," said Jarrod, an engineer by training.

"I'm still not letting anyone inside," he continued. "It's not safe. And we're still not hearing anything from the state."

ON SHAKY GROUND

Virginia Petersavage bought the place two years ago after selling her house in Pittsburgh.

Jarrod did the fix-up work himself and the moving van was just getting ready to roll out with his mom's belongings - when he noticed the undulating driveway.

A subterranean coal seam fire that has plagued Nellie Lane and the surrounding area for decades is the culprit.

The incendiary simmering broke through again 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 warm to the touch were the byproducts.

Firefighters, in fact, recorded temperatures of up to 700 degrees, which is hot enough to melt lead.

According to archives from the state Division of Environmental Protection, the fire was believed to have originated in the former Kuhn Mine No. 1.

The old mine is tapped into the Pittsburgh coal seam which lies beneath 53 counties in three Appalachian states.

Efforts to quell the fire have been hit-or-miss, and the DEP's surface remediation effort, Jarrod Petersavage said, has only made the problem more nagging.

The entire hillside was deforested over worries it could catch fire from the underground heat source. That meant the latticework of root systems which anchored the hillside went too.

Meanwhile, the DEP and its Abandoned Mine Lands arm, which tends to such compromised properties, has a plan to continue fighting the underground fire - while installing a retaining wall to shore up the environs.

Those plans, though, have stalled, Jarrod said Wednesday. Neither entity returned calls to The Dominion Post in time for this report.

At least three other houses, in addition to the Petersavage dwelling, are affected by now unstable terra firma.

WHERE THERE'S SMOKE ...

With the coal seam fire still burning, any work up top won't work, he said - and former White Hall mayor Guy Ward, who now serves in the state House of Delegates agreed.

"It's gonna be a Band-Aid," Ward said of the current remediation effort. "The DEP just needs to buy the houses and start over."

Which, the delegate said, the DEP has been so far unwilling to do.

'I MIGHT ALREADY BE'

For now, Virginia Petersavage plans for a mortgage-free life in the Mountain State are also on hold.

With her arm still in a cast, she was readying Wednesday for her evening shift at a Pittsburgh hospital. She's been a nurse for 54 years.

"I'm paying $300 a month for storage right now," she said.

"I'm sleeping in the basement at my friend's house. We need a plan here."

The nurse is still trying to prescribe to her sense of humor, but that's unsteady, too, she said.

That came out the other day at a medical appointment when her physician, who knows her plight, asked how she was doing.

"My doctor said, 'Why aren't you insane?' and I said, 'I might already be.'"