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. […]
Earlier this month, there was a massive slope failure on the "Sea to Sky" highway in British Columbia. It is interesting to note that this same area had a large rockslide in 1965, and a photo of this failure is featured on the cover of the classic text, Rock Slope Engineering by Hoek and Bray. The media played up the aspect that this highway is one of the only ways to access the site of the 2010 Winter Olympic games hosted by Vancouver.
The composite image above shows the book cover and the recent rockslide event (Photo credit: Erik Eberhardt of the University of British Columbia by way of Dave’s Landslide Blog). Dave has done a fabulous job collecting photos, facts and links from around the web. In a follow up post, he added some additional photos and discussion. I recently came across an article that described how the highway originally was slated to have a tunnel bypassing the slide, but that the price tag of $200 million (CAN?) for a 1-km stretch killed the project.
Residents of approximately 75 of the 111 homes evacuated after the slide have been allowed back into their homes. The City of San Diego is not wasting any time in determining the cause of the slide. The first of three 100-ft deep exploration shafts was excavated on Friday, and a Forensic Geologist from a firm hired by the City was sent down the hole to observe geology conditions and to locate the actual slip surface. Also, claims of leaking City water and/or sewer pipes prior to the failure have begun to surface. More details in the full post. (Photo by NELVIN CEPEDA / San Diego Union-Tribune)
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