Solomon Mullins (left), 89, watches as Gary Hubbard (center) and Mullins’ son Paul Mullins (right) move personal items from his and his wife’s home of 67 years at 214 Keystone Drive on Monday morning. A landslide threatening the neighborhood got worse overnight Sunday.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Paul Mullins spent part of the day Monday helping his father, Solomon Mullins, move furniture out of his lifelong home at 214 Keystone Drive. Paul Mullins said his parents can’t start the process of settling with insurance companies until the house is vacant.
Solomon Mullins, 89, and his wife, Helen, have been staying at a hotel, but Paul Mullins said the family is trying to arrange to buy a new house in Dunbar for the couple.
Paul Mullins said his mother is dealing fairly well with being displaced, but his father is having a harder time.
“He built that house,” Paul Mullins said. “They’ve been there at least 65 years.”
Last month several buildings were destroyed and dozens of homes evacuated because of a landslide that occurred on the hillside under Yeager Airport’s safety-overrun area. County officials expect a protracted series of negotiations with several different insurance companies as engineers, contractors and airport officials wrangle over who’s going to pay for what. Members of the Kanawha County Commission say they’re doing what they can to speed up the process.
The hillside underneath the airport showed signs of “additional movement” overnight Sunday, airport officials said Monday morning.
Yeager officials said the movement occurred in the “mechanically stabilized earth retention structure” along Keystone Drive and Barlow Drive.
In its statement, Yeager said the movement “has largely been contained to the existing area of the original slip” and no properties were threatened…
