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Rebuilding the Laurel Run Creek wall

Officials in Luzerne County are still assessing the impact of last week's rain and are promising to do right by people left with damage.

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — Last Wednesday, more than 50 feet of a creek wall in Wilkes-Barre came down and worried the folks who live in the homes there.

Wilkes-Barre's mayor says he is going to use money from the American Recovery Act to rebuild.

From Skycam 16, you can see the damage rains from Ida left along Laurel Run Creek, specifically behind Mitchell Street, where large portions of the creek wall have collapsed.

"Shocking," said homeowner Donna Keyes. "You know what water can do and how quickly things can change, so, like I said, the most important thing is no one was hurt. We were all safe. This could have been a lot worse than what it was. I think just the timing of how long the wall held before it actually collapsed in the ending of the rain, it was just really good timing that this wasn't worse."

Keyes said this wall has been a concern for her and her family for more than a decade.

"We were definitely concerned with the wall because there had been a lot of erosion that has been there, so this has been something that we have been talking about for a while. So we've held our breath for many years, and many large storms like this, and the wall has continued to hold, but this one I knew during the day I was just talking about it, and I just had that gut feeling that this was not going to work for us this time, and sure enough, it lived up to that."

City officials tell her they're going to make it right.

"We're here to tell you folks that live here we are going to replace this wall. We're going to do an integrity inspection of the rest of the wall that did not come down. We're going to make sure that, first of all, it does have integrity to hold water. And secondly, this section that's missing down here will also be replaced," said Wilkes-Barre Mayor George Brown.

Mayor Brown says the city will have an engineer in the water this week to check on the integrity of the wall that remains and then decide the best plan of action from there.

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