Gov. Wolf tours site of Route 30 landslide

EAST PITTSBURGH, Pa. — Crews are drilling into the hillside in East Pittsburgh where Route 30 once was and the destroyed road has now been completely removed.

It's part of the work they're doing to try to figure out what caused a portion of Route 30 to collapse over the weekend.

PHOTOS: Residents evacuated after apartment building, road collapses due to landslide

Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf took a tour Tuesday of the area impacted.

Dozens of people were evacuated and forced to leave their homes at Electric Avenue Apartments.

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Early Saturday morning, three of the four lanes of Route 30 slid 30 to 40 feet into apartment buildings below on Electric Avenue.

State and local officials said crews are continuing to excavate to determine a cause and a fix to the problem.

"We are going to continue to excavate so that we can confirm the cause of this slide and then we can get about the design and construction work for repairs," said Leslie Richards, PennDOT secretary.

PennDOT officials reiterated it will be months instead of weeks to complete repairs on the road, but they hope to have work started in a few weeks.

The closure affects 30,000 commuters.

"We can't control Mother Nature, but there's some things maybe we can do to prepare better in the future. Maybe we can learn something from what happened here.  We'll try to do that," Wolf said. "We've got to do it right and we are going to do it right. And it won't happen in a few days."

The 31 residents who have been displaced remain at hotels, and PennDOT officials said their goal is to get the residents who can return home back there as soon as possible.

Almost 10 inches of precipitation has fallen between Feb. 15 and April 4, making it a huge contributing factor for landslides we've seen in our region. This one makes one of 70 landslides in Allegheny County.

All of the repair work will cost tens of millions of dollars and because of that, there's a chance certain thresholds could be met that would allow to ask for help from the federal level.

Members from the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency were also there assessing the area to determine what the community needs.

They have started preliminary damage assessments and are now gathering costs associated with this landslide.

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The state has limited funds, but if they determine they're going to meet necessary financial thresholds, the governor could send a letter to President Trump asking for help.

“I think this one puts us in an area where it is a higher level priority with regards to the rest of the state from a perspective of damage assessments in a short time,” said Matt Brown, chief of Allegheny County Emergency Services.

Wolf said they're making sure the evacuees have the money they need to stay in hotels and are safe.

Cox Media Group