you know
it's it's an old company house but it's
home
and if something happens to it you can't
replace it wayne whitaker grew up right
here on straight hollow
it is in the cold camp of dane virginia
and his family is part of the history
here
today the sun shines above his family
home but on february 6th
heavy rains came down that caused the
hillside to start moving
while that alone was a concern at the
top of that sliding hill
said a giant boulder the call was
there's a rock up here on the hill
that's going to take the house out the
rock had broken from a cliff and landed
on an old mining bench
all remnants have historic mining that
took place in the 1930s and 40s
that meant a call to virginia's
abandoned mine land team
as well we were on the front side of the
really scary
inspector heather mcdonald taylor was
one of the first on the scene
essentially the rock was sitting on the
edge of the slope
and the slope below the rock was
beginning to erode away
virginia's mind safety team and local
authorities were called in to encourage
those below this slope
to evacuate as a precaution there were
two major concerns
the rock could fall and destroy the
homes on this street
or land in the creek and flood the
community
i think the coordinated effort with the
department
was amazing within two hours crews were
on site to first
control where the water was flowing so
the slide would stop
moving and then remove the rock
the safest solution was to hammer the
boulder into smaller pieces
in three days the threat of that rock
was gone nobody wants to see a disaster
in their community ever
but i think what happened here was an
awakening within the all the departments
and i think the community realized that
they had a friend in dmme unfortunately
before
work to permanently stabilize the slide
was complete
another threat came into play covid 19.
the team moved fast the world was
shutting down with coven
southwest virginia was shutting down
with covet so every day we were going as
fast as we could because suddenly we had
this additional concern
that with all the executive orders
coming out that we might actually be
shut down from working but thankfully
that didn't happen and we were able to
get it
to get it finished and thanks to just
over 246 thousand dollars from
virginia's abandoned mine land program
residents here say they feel safe again
it's home again
yeah you can go in here and lay down go
to sleep not have to worry about