The failure of the world’s largest engineered slope a year ago at Charleston’s Yeager Airport has generated widespread speculation from the international engineering community because of the scale of construction and the numerous prizes for design the project had garnered, says Chrys Steiakakis, a geotechnical engineer at Geosysta Ltd., Attiki, Greece. Steiakakis, who has a master’s degree in engineering from Virginia Tech, hosted an American Society of Civil Engineers online forum that has received comments on the incident from more than 100 engineers around the world.
Once praised for innovation, the project designer and contractor now face a lawsuit brought by airport officials. In a West Virginia circuit-court complaint, the airport accused designer Triad Engineering and general contractor Cast and Baker of gross negligence of an extremely “willful wanton and reckless nature,” showing gross indifference to the warning signs that precipitated the fail and defying “their obligations in pursuit of profits.”