The Arizona DOT and their contractor have begun blasting and earthwork to realign a portion of US 89 in northern Arizona near Page that was cut off by a large landslide in February of 2013. The massive blasting and excavation operation to push back the slope above the road will generate around 1 million cubic yards of material which will be used to construct a massive buttress at the toe of the slide. Check out the video below. [Source: ADOT YouTube Channel. Image: YouTube]
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Landslide Occurs in Residential La Jolla California
A landslide occured about 9am PT yesterday in a residential neighborhood of La Jolla, just north of San Diego. No injuries have been reported, but estimates are that 2,500 people are without either power or gas because of toppled power lines and ruptured gas lines. The Soledad Mountain Road is currently impassable. I’ll update this post as more information becomes available. In the mean time, check out some video and a location map after the break.
US 89 Bitter Springs Landslide Video Updates
Since I last posted about this landslide, ADOT has added several videos to their YouTube channel. It’s clear that this highway is going to be closed for the long term. ADOT and their on-call geotechnical consultant tasked with this project, Kleinfelder, are currently drilling boreholes to attempt to characterize the failure surface and determine what the geometry of the failure surface is. They are installing at least 10 inclinometers to try to determine the location of the slip plane or planes at depth and they have two extensometers to measure if any additional movement occurs. They are also performing LIDAR surveys as well. Check out the videos below.
Initial ADOT Video Describing the Failure
Click through for the videos!