As Dr. Petley noted in his blog post, this looks like a classic planar rock slide where the rock mass failed parallel to the dominant planar discontinuity set. The slide occurred on Highway 70 between SR 94 and Clinch Valley Road. It will take the better part of a week to clear the debris according to TDOT. [Source: The Landslide Blog – AGU Blogosphere. Image: Photo by Jay Herring via Amanda Ketchledge]
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Video: Rockslide on U.S. Highway 64 in Tennessee
Amazing video of a rockslide as it happened yesterday along U.S. Highway 64 in the Ocoee River gorge in Tennessee. TDOT crews had almost finished removing rockslide debris from an event earlier in the day when a second slide occurred, blocking the road again. That looks like a pretty planar joint set dipping right into the roadway and everything was wet from the recent rains. Click through for the video.
Geotechnical Engineering Challenges of British Columbia’s Sea-to-Sky Highway, gateway to the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been enjoying watching the 2010 Olympic Winter games over the past few days. If you have, you know that Whistler is the venue for many of the sports including alpine skiing, luge, skeleton, bobsled, ski jumping, biathlon and cross-country skiing among others. The Whistler area is located about 50-miles or so North of Vancouver. In order to get to Whistler, you need to drive along Highway 99, better known as the Sea-to-Sky Highway. This highway has a long history of geotechnical problems, including some significant structurally controlled rockslides and landslides. In the years leading up to these Olympic Games a fair amount of work was done on the highway with some significant geotechnical innovations.