CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Weather worries remained on the minds of emergency officials in Kanawha County who continued to work in Charleston’s Keystone Drive area on Friday, a day after a massive landslide at Yeager Airport pushed tons of dirt and debris through at least two buildings.
As of Friday morning, C.W. Sigman, deputy director of the Kanawha County Office of Emergency Services, reported the slide was “reasonably stable,” but he said the heavy rain that was in the forecast for Friday night into Saturday morning could change that.
“I think it’s going to make our situation a whole lot worse, particularly if we get the higher amounts of rain,” Sigman said.
Crews were working to keep Elk Two Mile Creek clear of mud, rock and debris from the massive slide. Additionally, “As the water moves downstream, it brings silt with it and you have to keep opening up the channel,” said Mike Plante, spokesperson for Yeager Airport.
The National Weather Service issued a Flood Warning for the waterway while all of Kanawha County and more than 40 other West Virginia counties were scheduled to be under Flood Watches into Saturday.
“We actually could expect anywhere from an inch to 2 in. (of rain) across Kanawha County, across the central part of the state,” John Sikora, a NWS meteorologist, said. “That slip up there is already saturated and any more rain on top of it’s only going to make matters worse.”
Water was already backed up into homes on Keystone Drive on Friday morning. Sigman estimated more than 12 homes were underwater or threatened by water.
Ongoing clearing work, he said, would be critical. “If we have a major slide here that dams this creek up completely, we could get far up past the Greenbrier Street, up in homes in the Rutledge area (with flooding),” he said.
“Every possible method is being discussed (to keep the waterway clear), including bringing in possibly concrete culverts to keep it open and bringing in 12 in. pumps that can move 4,000 gallons (of water) a minute to assist in keeping this open,” Plante said on Friday’s MetroNews “Talkline.”
The slide is from the 270-foot tall engineered fill, containing 1.5 million cubic yards of dirt total, that sits below Yeager’s EMAS system at the end of the runway. EMAS stands for Emergency Materials Arresting System which is designed to stop a plane in an emergency situation.
Kanawha County officials estimated a third of that fill, one of the largest of its kind anywhere, was part of the slide as of Friday morning.
“Obviously, something went wrong and we’re going to try to find out what that was,” Plante pledged. “But right now is not the time for assessing blame, it’s time for mitigating the situation on the ground and that’s what we’re focused on.”
Despite the landslide, Yeager Airport was operating with normal flight schedules on Friday. Officials with the Federal Aviation Administration estimated about 80 percent of the EMAS system was not affected by the slide.
Yeager Airport is West Virginia’s largest airport.