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I grew up in Weirton, live in Pittsburgh now (20ish minutes away from it) but my family and good amount of friends still live there and the surrounding areas so I'm still "home" a lot. Weirton isn't dangerous or rolling in crime if that's what you're asking. I don't know what constitutes as "rural crime" but all the towns up in the north besides Weirton like New Cumberland, Chester, etc are all fine. I don't have any real ties to places like Follansbee and Wellsburg, which sit below all those northern towns I just listed but they're not really in the news for crime either if that's what you want to know.
Concur. I grew up in Hancock County and have family still living there, so I spend some time in Weirton and the other towns Bellic lists. Weirton seems to be on an upswing these days with several new businesses getting started.
In reviewing all these great responses to my original post, I do not see any real concern for increase crime. I have been looking into all the areas mentioned as possible places which meet our criteria and was somewhat shocked to see much negative tallying of rising crime rates. Granted data can be scewed and not always realistic therefore I am wondering if you are seeing this in your communities near and far, if so why?
The only data I’d be concerned about right now in this area is water quality.
Hi..
Would you be commenting on city vs well? Our water here in Tucson is full of chlorine and lord only knows what else. I am not aware of any contamination from industry or waste. Could I trouble you to be more specific? Living in the desert there is always concerns regarding draught, water shortages. Funny, you wouldn't know this by looking at the mass development.
Hi..
Would you be commenting on city vs well? Our water here in Tucson is full of chlorine and lord only knows what else. I am not aware of any contamination from industry or waste. Could I trouble you to be more specific? Living in the desert there is always concerns regarding draught, water shortages. Funny, you wouldn't know this by looking at the mass development.
Our house is served by the city of Wellsburg. It gets its water from the Ohio River as does most of the towns along the stretch of the northern panhandle. The train derailment at East Palestine on Feb 3, 2023, caused massive concern for those of us downriver from the spill where towns get their water for the towns from the river and that’s almost all of us. It’s best to look on a map to find East Palestine and then look at all the towns below it, like Weirton, Steubenville, OH, Follansbee, Wellsburg (where we are), Beech Bottom, Brilliant, down to Wheeling and further down.
They tell us our water is safe. But who knows.
Also our town is suffering from a lack of funds to fix the city water system. Most of us have rust in our lines worse than you’d find in well water. My husband set up a complicated system to make our water decent so I don’t end up with orange colored clothes after washing. We also have a water softener in the system. The water is hard. But that’s not unusual for many areas.
Oh how terrible for those folks in East Palestine, let alone the lack of response from the federal government. Guess I never considered contamination from neighboring sources on my list, forever chemicals. I guess having hard water is nothing compared to what you have experienced or will be possibly.
We have had both, well and city water, can't say I have every experienced good quality water without treatment anywhere we have lived but not possible leathal comtamination.
You have certainly reminded me of one thing outside of crime to investigate, cancer rates. My brother died at 47 of lung cancer, he lived in Columbus Ohio. Granted he was a smoker off and on however both of his houses with basements tested positive for radon, his wife also died from lung cancer. Oderless, colorless, luckily todays smoke detectors have radon testers too. Good grief.
Anyway. thank you so much for your frank information, more items to add to my list
Oh how terrible for those folks in East Palestine, let alone the lack of response from the federal government. Guess I never considered contamination from neighboring sources on my list, forever chemicals. I guess having hard water is nothing compared to what you have experienced or will be possibly.
We have had both, well and city water, can't say I have every experienced good quality water without treatment anywhere we have lived but not possible leathal comtamination.
You have certainly reminded me of one thing outside of crime to investigate, cancer rates. My brother died at 47 of lung cancer, he lived in Columbus Ohio. Granted he was a smoker off and on however both of his houses with basements tested positive for radon, his wife also died from lung cancer. Oderless, colorless, luckily todays smoke detectors have radon testers too. Good grief.
Anyway. thank you so much for your frank information, more items to add to my list
I have lived in an area with excellent nicely soft water. It is a blessing. Only reason we didn’t stay there were multi faceted, health care, the climate in the area, taxes.
We’ve made the water system work until the mess of East Palestine. We honestly don’t know how that’s affecting our water.
I have lived in an area with excellent nicely soft water. It is a blessing. Only reason we didn’t stay there were multi faceted, health care, the climate in the area, taxes.
We’ve made the water system work until the mess of East Palestine. We honestly don’t know how that’s affecting our water.
Your mention of health care, climate and taxes caught my attention, could I trouble you to comment further? My husband has been recovering from a rare form of skin cancer, in remission so health care within a reasonable commute is very important. You mentioned climate and taxes. Here in Arizona the costs of living are going crazy. Insurance companies are taking advantage of "climate change" and mass migration to greatly raise our premiums. Our whole area here has been declard a wild fire hazzard. I have lived in this region off and on for 14 years...never had a wild fire. Come to find out the insurance companies are padding themselves from all the losses from surrounding areas where inappropriate land care management created major damage...ie..California. As for the auto, because of all the uninsured motorists we get to pay for them too, streaming into out area, really sick of it.
Our dream is to hopefully sell out of here and pay cash for another home. Just need a cute little ranch type, couple of acre's, wish to garden, small home town atmosphere, like the Hallmark movies..lol.
Hopefully we can get out of here when an apportunity presents itself. Friends of ours are selling out and moving to Texas...??? Nope...to crowded.
Ok, where we are, topography is against you for a ranch. A raised ranch is possible but a true ranch, I’ve only seen a handful. This area is very mountainous. And the same applies as you wander into Pittsburgh but there are areas of Pittsburgh that are fairly level.
Health care is excellent in Pittsburgh which for us is about 45 mins away. We’re far enough away to be away from the madness of a large city but accessible. We also have a good system here but we had trouble finding a primary when we first moved here. Long story short, we ended up finding a primary with Allegheny Health in Pittsburgh. We’ve used the Epic health system for over 10 years throughout the country and like being able to connect our hospitals and doctors together so we prefer hospital systems in that system. Allegheny is one. UPMC, the big gun in Pittsburgh hasn’t gotten on board yet but they are supposed to be getting there. They’re good, just harder to get through their portal system. We TRY to avoid going into downtown Pittsburgh, any hospital requiring going thru the Fort Pitt tunnel cause traffic is horrid but many providers have several offices.
Insurance here is very reasonable in WV. Only reason our homeowners is high, our house was built in 1937 and has a slate roof. That’s an expensive thing to have these days, even though it was inspected and will probably outlast the house and slate is pretty fire proof. But high is relative. It’s actually cheaper than what we paid in NC. Our house there was a 1912. Car insurance is very low. What dings us is the car tax. We still haven’t figured it out but the previous year, we had an RV and a F 450 on our titles. Now we are down to one vehicle.
If you do head over to PA instead, avoid Allegheny County, taxes there are nuts.
One thing we did do was look at the flood map, the Ohio river is right out our door. I can see Ohio from my bedroom. Highway 2 runs up from Wheeling to Weirton, WV and on the river side of hwy 2, much of that land is in a flood zone. We are on the high side. And I do mean the high side.
We spent almost a year here at an RV park before buying a house. We shopped neighborhoods up and down the river. What we didn’t know was the water situation because the RV park had good water. He was in a different town. And even though we chatted with the neighbors they didn’t mention the water. And the rust didn’t appear all the time.
Everyone says rent the first year, that’s kinda what we did. Although we owned our RV. And even in this area, there are RV parks open year round, there are pipeline workers needing places. They aren’t fancy but they have the basics.
Any other questions, I’ll try to answer. By the way, we did live in PA, Moon Township decades ago. That’s why we came back to this area.
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How's the Crime?
