Me Too!
I was born and raised in the central part of IL,, Pekin to be exact. Pekin was built over old coal mines and I can remember being little and my dad and brother driving out to route 98 outside Pekin to pick up coal that was naturally occuring to burn for heat. The stuff was just everywhere. Unfortunately, the city decided to grow to the east which was where the majority of the coal mines were located. A whole huge sub division was built over the mine that was constantly suffering from sinkholes. In fact, the rehab center where I worked was built smack dab in the middle of that area. It's like YIKES, what were they thinking?
One of the first questions you got asked was 'Is your house over one of the coal mine areas of town' whenever you went to buy home owners insurance from anyone.
I remember driving to work one morning and noticing that one street was 'taped' off and closed. When I looked closer I realized that the homeowner of the first house on the street didn't have a drive way any longer. It had caved in during the night. These were expensive homes, 150,000 dollars up. What were they thinking and more than that what was the city thinking? They know the old coal mines are there but did nothing to insure the safety of the home owners who bought property and built over this maze.
The home I owned there was built in the city's original section of town and built over a land fill. Even it on occasion suffered from sink holes mainly because one of the old cars buried in the land fill would finally rot and collapse after 70+ years of being underground.
Sometimes cities just plain scare me. I'm so glad we are country dwellers.
I was born and raised in the central part of IL,, Pekin to be exact. Pekin was built over old coal mines and I can remember being little and my dad and brother driving out to route 98 outside Pekin to pick up coal that was naturally occuring to burn for heat. The stuff was just everywhere. Unfortunately, the city decided to grow to the east which was where the majority of the coal mines were located. A whole huge sub division was built over the mine that was constantly suffering from sinkholes. In fact, the rehab center where I worked was built smack dab in the middle of that area. It's like YIKES, what were they thinking?
One of the first questions you got asked was 'Is your house over one of the coal mine areas of town' whenever you went to buy home owners insurance from anyone.I remember driving to work one morning and noticing that one street was 'taped' off and closed. When I looked closer I realized that the homeowner of the first house on the street didn't have a drive way any longer. It had caved in during the night. These were expensive homes, 150,000 dollars up. What were they thinking and more than that what was the city thinking? They know the old coal mines are there but did nothing to insure the safety of the home owners who bought property and built over this maze.
The home I owned there was built in the city's original section of town and built over a land fill. Even it on occasion suffered from sink holes mainly because one of the old cars buried in the land fill would finally rot and collapse after 70+ years of being underground.
Sometimes cities just plain scare me. I'm so glad we are country dwellers.
