Stories Related to Yeager Airport Sues 20 Companies Over Landslide

By David Gutman By Kate White Kate White Yeager Airport is suing 20 companies involved with the design and construction of its runway extension project, which collapsed in a massive landslide in March, alleging negligence and breach of contract and seeking to recover millions of dollars in compensation and punitive damages.The airport filed suit Friday against Triad Engineering, the firm that designed the man-made hillside that supported the runway extension, and Cast & Baker, the contractor that led construction on the project.The airport also sued a Pennsylvania-based blasting company, a Dunbar-based paving company, the companies that designed and installed the EMAS blocks used on the runway extension, the company that makes the geo-synthetic mesh that held the hillside together and a Pennsylvania-based quality-control company that also were involved in the project.Also included in the lawsuit are the airport's two insurance companies, AIG Aerospace and New Hampshire Insurance Co., and the insurers of every company involved with the runway extension project.The airport alleges that the runway extension and the man-made hillside that supported it were improperly designed, improperly tested, not properly inspected and not properly monitored.After years of slight shifts, the hillside, which was completed in 2007, collapsed in March, destroying homes and a church on Keystone Drive, in Charleston, and forcing the evacuation of more than 100 people."The event in question is of a kind which ordinarily does not occur in the absence of negligence," Yeager's attorneys write in the lawsuit, filed in Kanawha County Circuit Court.