Paying the Price for Centuries of Growth : Many Homeowners in Pennsylvania Get a Sinking Feeling as Old Shafts Cave In

Martha Priori felt the vibrations, then heard a sound like a loud crumpling of paper before she realized what was happening: The walls of her house were buckling around her.

The 33-year-old Pittsburgh resident was helping to pay the price of two centuries of growth and industrialization in America. Her home, like thousands of others in the state, was sitting over an abandoned coal mine.

The empty mines, many of them weakened by age, can suddenly collapse and break the foundations of houses above them. Such a cave-in can transform buildings into misshapen hulks in a matter of days.

Pennsylvania, honeycombed with abandoned mines that date as far back as the late 1700s, is taking the brunt of the nation’s mine-subsidence problem, officials say.

“The major reason is that Pennsylvania was the energy capital of the world and fueled the westward expansion of the country,” said Thomas Leonard of the federal Office of Surface Mining in Washington.

14 Houses Condemned

“Nobody really knew what it would do to the land,” he said.

On the fringe of downtown Pittsburgh, once the nation’s coal and iron center, 14 houses in the Hill District, including Priori’s, have been evacuated and condemned in the last few weeks.

Downtown Pittsburgh does not lie over the coal bed and is not affected.

Since the recent condemnations, the number of calls from property owners seeking state-sponsored mine-subsidence insurance has doubled, authorities say.

Federal mine officials were testing for evidence of a mine collapse in the area where the houses--all on the same street--began to buckle March 10.

But Pittsburgh authorities agreed that a mine collapse is the likely cause here in the cradle of the nation’s steel industry. The hills surrounding the downtown area are riddled with century-old shafts where bituminous coal was mined.

“I don’t know much else that it could be,” said Paul Imhoff, superintendent of the city’s Bureau of Building Inspection.

Insurance Gains Popularity

Imhoff said that he was one of the 2,500 people who called the state Department of Environmental Resources office in nearby McMurray to apply for mine-subsidence insurance in the six days after the incident.

“Seeing the predicament those poor people were in and where I live--in a mining area in the hills--I decided I’d better,” he said.

Under the program, begun in 1961, residents of the 27 coal-mining counties--20 of which are in the bituminous region in western Pennsylvania--are eligible for the insurance, which pays $1,000 for every $1 of the annual premium. Private insurers do not offer such coverage.

Nearly a third of the state’s $1.3 billion in coverage last year was on property in Pittsburgh and surrounding Allegheny County, Philip Zullo of the state environmental department said. The fund is self-supporting, he said.

Since 1982, he said, Allegheny County residents have tripled their requests for mine-subsidence insurance because of the increasing number of mine collapses in populated areas.

But most people, such as Priori and her neighbors--and the city’s chief building inspector--don’t think about it, officials say.

Many Ignore Hazard

“You can see mine holes in the hillside near me,” said Imhoff, who has lived in his house for 27 years. “But I just never bothered.”

According to the most recent figures compiled by the federal Bureau of Mines, in 1979, Pennsylvania had 151,400 populated acres underlain by mines that could collapse, far more than any other state.

West Virginia was next, with 89,100 acres, followed by Kentucky, with 37,200 acres.

Under a federal mine reclamation program that taxes active mining companies 15 cents a ton of coal for their underground mines, Pennsylvania has also received far more money than any other state for restoring abandoned mines, according to David Hamilton of the Office of Surface Mining in Harrisburg.

Since the program began in 1977, Pennsylvania has received $241.7 million, Kentucky has received $146.9 million and West Virginia $123 million, he said.

Most of the money goes toward “backfilling” the abandoned mines with ash, dirt or concrete to shore up the surface.

The federal money, however, has made little headway in heavily populated areas such as Pittsburgh, where old mines were haphazardly tunneled.

Old Supports Eroding

“I don’t know what can be done now, except for people to take out mine-subsidence insurance,” said Norman Flint, professor emeritus of geology at the University of Pittsburgh.

Flint said that coal miners in the late 1800s and early 1900s used the “room-and-pillar” method of mining--extracting coal from cavernous underground rooms and leaving standing piles of coal to support them. The pillars, he said, have been eroding ever since.

“I think, eventually, there will be some collapse in all of the mines,” he said.

“Most of the subsidence is slow enough that it would not cause bodily injury,” Flint said. “But there is always the chance of gas lines rupturing. There’s no way of knowing when the mines are going to go.”