'It Sounded Like A Jackhammer': Twin Cities Homeowner Finds Violent House Shaking Linked To Landfill
BURNSVILLE, Minn. (WCCO) -- It sounds like something out of a movie: A Burnsville woman says her house shook violently, without explanation, for more than 10 hours.
When it happened last month, Kelly Carlson had no idea who to call or what was causing it.
Now, she has answers.
"It's hard to imagine the house could shake that much, that it would cause that sort of crack," Carlson said. "It sounded like a jackhammer."
Carlson showed WCCO-TV what she says are the cracks in her walls and exterior brick left behind from that night.
"I spent that whole night being like, what could it be?," Carlson said. "Is this a gas line issue, is there a water pipe feeding the neighborhood that's rumbling that hard?"
She called the police.
"We all just kind of agreed it was crazy and not normal, and they didn't really know what to think of it either or what to do," Carlson said.
A tech from her gas company came out.
"He was baffled, too," Carlson said.
No one knew what that strange and violent shaking was.
"It sounded like my neighbor was running a high-powered generator in his garage," Carlson said. "In the moment, it was scary."
After some digging, Carlson found out that violent shaking was caused by something that happened at the landfill less than a mile from her house.
"Never in a million years would I have thought that anything going on at the landfill would be causing my home to shake," Carlson said.
The Burnsville Public Works director said the Carlson wasn't the only one who called the city.
He says the whole thing was caused by a malfunction with the equipment the landfill uses to burn methane, a required step that reduces the landfill's impact on the environment.
Waste Management says the Burnsville Sanitary Landfill "contacted the equipment manufacturer," adding that a crew is currently onsite to "remedy" the situation.
The company said that "new monitoring and control equipment has been installed, and is functioning correctly which should prevent this type of incident in the future."
Carlson says she's meeting with the city and Waste Management to go over the damage to her house.
"I can't stop thinking about it," she said. "I want to make sure the things that are happening that affect our community are safe."