{"id":14804,"date":"2015-03-18T07:52:05","date_gmt":"2015-03-18T07:52:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=14804"},"modified":"2015-03-18T07:52:05","modified_gmt":"2015-03-18T07:52:05","slug":"yeager-airport-fill-slope-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2015\/03\/18\/yeager-airport-fill-slope-failure\/","title":{"rendered":"Yeager airport fill slope failure: the landslide history"},"content":{"rendered":"
Yeager Airport fill slope failure<\/h5>\n

Movement of the Yeager Airport fill slope failure<\/a> appears to have ceased and the residents of Keystone Drive have now been allowed back to their homes<\/a>.\u00a0 There is a great deal of interest in the causes of the landslide, which remain far from clear, and in the approach that will be taken to mitigating the slope so as to protect (and presumably rebuild) the EMAS at the end of the runway. \u00a0 John Boyle has been undertaking some digging into the landslide history of this site; Bill Murphy at Leeds has been kindly keeping me in the loop.\u00a0 Two interesting aspects have emerged.\u00a0 The first is on a Facebook site<\/a>, which includes several interesting comments from past and present residents of Keystone Drive.\u00a0 Key comments include the following (I have included just the key pieces of information needed to understand the site):<\/p>\n

Robert Harrah<\/strong>: “…they covered up a natural spring on that hill that we played in as kids”<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Terina Joe Adkins “<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/span>This isn’t the first time folks. My grandparents house went over in a mudslide on Keystone 45 years ago d… Roll forward 45 years and it’s happened again…”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Kelly Stricker Spurlock<\/strong> “<\/span><\/span><\/span>Terina, I remember that. I was just a kid when that happened. I had a friend, Sharon Koon, who also lost a house then. Did your grandparents house sit on the side of the airport just above where the church was?”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Kelly Stricker Spurlock<\/strong> “<\/span><\/span><\/span>Almost exact same spot for the slide then and now!”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Terina Joe Adkins “<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong>Kelly, yes my grandparents, Bud and Evelyn Hill’s house sat on the side of the airport just up from the church. Almost in the exact place this slide us. My mom, Barbara talks about The Koons.”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is backed up by a newspaper report from Charleston Gazette on 19th March 1973.\u00a0 Whilst the image (and indeed the caption) have not reproduced well, the implications are clear:<\/p>\n

\"Yeager<\/a>

Charleston Gazette, 19th March 1973<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Kanawha Airport was renamed Yeager Airport.\u00a0 This Google Earth image is from 2003, before the EMAS works:<\/p>\n

\"Yeager<\/a>

Google Earth<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

Even allowing for the distortion of the image caused by the low quality ground model in Google Earth, it is no surprise that this slope has a history of landslides.\u00a0 I wonder how this was taken into account in the construction of the fill slope.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Historical accounts and recollections by local residents suggest that the site of the Yeager Airport fill slope failure may have a history of landslides<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":14806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[850,469,851,48,849],"class_list":["post-14804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-landslide-report","tag-charleston","tag-featured","tag-fill-slope","tag-usa","tag-yeager-airport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}