SOUTH ROCKWOOD, Mich. – Some neighbors downriver are having major problems with explosions at a nearby quarry.
Neighbors in the South Rockwood community said explosions being used to break up the rocks at the quarry are becoming unbearable for both them and their homes.
For anyone running a quarry, blasting is the name of the game. But some neighbors kwood said when the bombs go off, their houses are feeling the effects.
"It actually shakes the whole house," Wesley Dillon said. "Windows rattle and everything."
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Dillon's home was once his grandfather's and was built in the 1940s. Over the past year, he's been fixing and re-fixing cracks inside and out. But he doesn't think it's because of old age.
"The back corner here, this is the worst part," Dillon said. "Yeah these were actually gaps like this, just coming apart."
Two to three times a week, the quarry blasts, and two to three times a week, the homes shake.
"It shake the whole house," Arlene Fox said. "Your pictures are sideways, even. And I just looked in my front room and I'm starting to see a crack."
"The foundation is cracking," Dillon said. "I've been having to seal it up where the blocks have actually been moving. I'm assuming from the trembles in the ground."
An employee from Sylvania Minerals Quarry said it would be very difficult for ground vibrations to crack a foundation. They said Dillon and his neighbors are probably feeling air-over pressure, not the ground shaking.
The quarry uses seismographs to make sure it never exceeds U.S. Bureau of Mines blast standards.
Still, Dillon is always worried about the next blast.
"I'm worried my house is going to fall in from everything breaking away," he said. "I'm just afraid the floors are going to fall right in."