photo by: Derek Redd

A Park View Road house collapsed under the weight of a landslide earlier this week, leaving the family who lived there searching for answers.

WHEELING — Two Mondays ago, Betty Mott was sitting in her Park View Road home when she heard a crack, then a banging noise. She looked upstairs in the house and found nothing, then downstairs and found nothing.

When she went to the basement, she found the source.

“The cement was buckled up and the furnace was popping out of the joints,” she said. “That’s when I knew something was happening.”

What was happening was a landslide that kept pushing farther and farther into the home until, earlier this week, the home collapsed under the weight of the earth and was left uninhabitable. Now Mott and her husband are working on their future in the community.

Once the landslide began that Monday, Mott said the house was still stable enough through that Friday to pull out items. They were all smaller things, like smaller furniture and keepsakes. They debated trying to pull out larger items like the stove, but worried that the weight of the appliance, coupled with the weight of the people trying to move it, might make the situation too dangerous.

There came a point this week, Mott said, that it became too dangerous to reenter the house at all.

“When the hillside really started moving, that’s when we knew we couldn’t even sneak in and try to get stuff,” she said.

Heavy rains began and lasted for most of last week, causing landslides in several areas of the Northern Panhandle. Those rains also led to flooding of creeks and the Ohio River.

Mott said a contractor in the past had told her about a culvert behind her house that was sending water down against it, but when his work stopped the water from coming, she figured that solved the problem.

The home wasn’t insured, Mott said, so she and her husband have been contacting various agencies to see if someone like FEMA would be able to help. She, her husband and their poodles are now staying next door with her son and daughter-in-law. The landslide has not affected that house, Mott said.

While Mott feels fortunate that she, her husband and her pets are safe, there remains sadness at everything that was lost. While some items were saved, she can’t help but think of all the other things that were lost in the landslide.

She also feels the pain of losing a home that has been in her family her entire life. She grew up in that house and she and her husband bought it, hoping to retire there in the next year or two.

“We wanted to sit on the porch and watch the dogs in the yard,” she said, “but now we know we have to do something else.”

The times ahead will be hard, she admits, but the only answer is to persevere.

“We just have to be strong,” she said. “We’ll cry a little, get tough again, then cry a little more and then just try to be positive. Once you get negative, that doesn’t do you any good.”