A Sinking Feeling

One of the most landslide prone regions in the country, southwestern Pennsylvania is a slide just waiting to happen. The area's steep hills, combined with decades of building, regrading, and road building, and numerous freeze-thaw cycles have triggered over 15,000 ancient and geologically recent major landslides, as documented by U.S. Geological Survey landslide maps.

Although most of the known landslides in Western Pennsylvania have occurred since WWII, landslides are definitely not a new phenomenon to the region. The Monongahela River is named for the Native American word Menaungehilla, meaning "river with the sliding banks."

"Backyard landslides," common in the Pittsburgh area, trigger abandonment of several dozen homes each year as cost estimates for repair and stabilization of the landslide (several hundred thousand dollars is common) far exceed the value of the home/homes affected. So what is a homeowner to do? Standard homeowners policies do not cover landslides and, unlike floods and subsidence, there are no state or federal insurance programs to bridge that coverage gap. Special insurance policy riders may be purchased at additional cost, but these are fairly expensive for the average homeowner. The best way to protect yourself from landslides is to educate yourself. Investigate the land a house is built on before you buy it. Maps are available from the Pittsburgh Office of the Pennsylvania Geological Survey which highlight landslide prone regions across the state. You should also check with your local county or municipal government office, which should have copies of these landslide maps as well as information on development, regrading, filling, etc. in your location which could possibly affect your home's stability.