Crews work to prevent landslide after multiple in Harrison County over past few weeks

2/22/2019

​HARRISON COUNTY, W.Va (WDTV) -  The continuing cycle of rain, snow, and sun has damaged hillsides across Doddridge, Monongalia, and Harrison Counties. 

Two weeks ago a major landslide near the Tyler County line shut down both lanes of Rt.18 for the day while crews tried to clear the fallen trees and rubble from the road.Just last week Rt. 20 going through Nutter Fort saw not one, but two slides in the same location just days apart.

After DOH crews were able to clear the road way, another wave of rain came through the area washing out some of the hillside two days later. Crews had to close the busy road for six hours the second time, and the area is still considered a cause for concern.

Bright and early Thursday morning, Nutter Fort Public Works crews were out repairing a hill slide along Michigan Avenue, which supervisor Taylor Keith says they'd rather try to prevent now, than be called to clean up at 2 a.m.

"Everybody knows that with these excessive rains there have been slides all over the county," said Keith. "We had issues here, some trees had fallen down. But it's a nice day so we wanted to clean them up before we got called out at 2 or 3 in the morning."

The road, that leads to a residential area and the Clarksburg City Park ball fields, was closed for hours as crews removed trees, fixed a ditch, and moved rocks to prevent the hill from coming down anymore.

A combination of dead trees and the weather have caused this years slides to be worse than before. "It's just that excessive amount of rain. A lot of the vegetation you can see is dying so it's just not holding the hill together. We've had some issues the past couple years, with this year being the worse, so we're trying to clean her up."


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WDTV - https://www.wdtv.com/content/news/Crews-work-to-prevent-hillslides-after-multiple-506171911.html