16 Dangers Nobody Tells You Before You Move To The Ozarks (One Is In The Dirt Of Your Yard)

In one county on the edge of the Missouri Ozarks, the government has been digging up front yards. More than 5,800 residential properties tested, more than 1,940 yards dug out and replaced, because the dirt where children play was full of lead from a century of mining. The houses look like any other house for sale, and nothing on the listing tells you. That is what this video is about. Sixteen dangers of living in the Ozarks that almost nobody mentions before you move: not the snakes, not the winding roads (I have made those videos), but the things that come with the house, the land, the water under it and the county it sits in. The first one on the list is the danger everybody warns you about, and I explain why it is mostly wrong. From there: counties with no building permits, fire protection ratings that change five road miles from a station, 911 calls that cannot find you, hospitals that closed, radon, old meth houses, the New Madrid fault, the 2009 ice storm, the Illinois River case, the 2017 flood, wells and septic tanks in karst, electrified docks, Joplin, the town of Picher, and the Old Lead Belt. If you live in the Ozarks, tell me what you wish someone had told you before you moved. The last videos I made about this region were built out of what people told me in the comments. CHAPTERS 00:00 Before you move 00:39 Intro 01:29 16. Sinkholes (and why the fear is mostly wrong) 02:25 15. The house nobody inspected 03:37 14. The fire truck that is too far away 04:35 13. The 911 call that cannot find you 05:37 12. The hospital that closed 06:31 11. Radon 07:32 10. The house that used to be a meth lab 08:43 9. The New Madrid fault 09:50 8. The 2009 ice storm 11:00 7. What is running into the river 12:09 6. The 2017 flood 13:14 5. Your well and your septic tank 14:32 4. The dock 15:40 3. The Joplin tornado 16:58 2. Picher, the town the government bought 18:30 1. The dirt in your yard 20:37 What this list is really about SOURCES U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Big River Mine Tailings, Tar Creek, Oronogo-Duenweg, radon) · U.S. Department of Justice · U.S. Geological Survey (New Madrid zone, Ozark Plateaus aquifer) · Missouri Geological Survey · Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services · Revised Statutes of Missouri 64.170 · McDonald County Commission · Ozark Fire Protection District · Missouri Department of Public Safety · Missouri Hospital Association · National Weather Service, Springfield · NIST · U.S. District Court, Northern District of Oklahoma. HOW THIS VIDEO WAS MADE Written and narrated for this channel. Every figure comes from one of the sources above; nothing is estimated or rounded up for effect. Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under the licences below. Locator maps are National Park Service public domain base maps with every location plotted from real coordinates. Landscape footage is licensed stock. IMAGE CREDITS Photographs from Wikimedia Commons, licensed as follows. CC BY 2.0: KOMUnews; macahanC6R Eje Gustafsson; Paul Sableman from St. Louis, MO. CC BY 2.5: Ben Jacobson (Kranar Drogin). CC BY 3.0: AbeEzekowitz at English Wikipedia. CC BY 4.0: Brian Stansberry; Brian Stansberry (photographer); TCP04. CC BY-SA 2.0: formulanone; peggydavis6. CC BY-SA 2.5: User:JeremyA. CC BY-SA 3.0: AbeEzekowitz; Andrew Joseph; Fredlyfish4; Kbh3rd. CC BY-SA 4.0: Doncram; Jon Roanhaus. Public domain: Barry Bahler; Bill Kuykendal; Kansas City District U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; Nyttend; Raj1020 at en.wikipedia; U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Kansas City); U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Unknown author. Licence texts at creativecommons.org/licenses. Base map: National Park Service. Landscape footage licensed from Pexels. 🔔 SUBSCRIBE NOW: https://bit.ly/4eRjCDK #DangerousGeography #GeographyDocumentary #DangerousPlaces #ozarks