MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – A rock slide above Monongahela Boulevard in Morgantown Monday afternoon damaged a passenger vehicle and slammed into a WVU PRT car.
Morgantown fire chief Mark Caravasos says the slide occurred at 3:39 p.m.
“The boulder was large enought to cause significant damage to the vehicle, it then broke into several pieces and continued across the boulevard,”Caravasos said,”Pieces of it went through the fence and impacted a PRT car on the track.”
Three people were injured as a result of the slide. The driver of the passenger, which had significant front end damage from one of the rocks and two people in the PRT car, which is WVU’s main people mover between the Downtown and Evansdale campuses. Eight people were in the PRT car at the time of the incident.
Morgantown police chief Ed Preston says this is not the first time that hill had had problems.
“Destabilized hillside as a result of the bad weather, the rain and snow, a hillside that has a lot of rock and clay, we’ve had problems there before,”Preston said,”Boulders are falling across the roadway, we’ve had a car hit and a PRT car hit.”
Preston says efforts are underway now to get a geologist from the DOH to determine the best fix for the problem.
“We’re really lucky, that’s part of the reason it is closed, these very substantial boulders, the size of cars coming off that hillside,”Preston said.
Three people have been injured. Mon Boulevard will remain closed until the DOH removes the rocks and stbilizes the hillside.
Buses are currently running during the PRT’s closure. There are two loops. A set of buses are running between the Life Science Building and Evansdale Crossing. Another set of buses is running between Towers, Evansdale Crossing and Mountaineer Station.
The hillside has been the site of many rock slides over the years including some that have closed the street for days at a time. Few of those though have caused injuries like Monday’s incident.
A WVU spokesperson said of the damage in the PRT photos happened during the process of removing the passengers from the car.