In October of 2009, a massive landslide in the Nile Valley, near Yakima, Washington, took out a portion of Washington SR 410 and impacted the Naches River as well. This video from WSDOT shows what emergency response was required to get temporary traffic restored on a detour and get a more permanent detour constructed.
Geologic Hazards
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!
Geologic Hazards
A 1-Minute ‘Rock Avalanche’ 4,800 Years Ago In Zion National Park
Imagine the scene 4,800 years ago when a rock avalanche nearly 2 km long buried much of the Zion Valley in a matter of 90 seconds, creating a dam on the Virgin River that flooded […]
Failures
Homeowners Can’t Nail Builder for Landslide
A federal judge ruled that the property owners can’t sue Pulte homes for the failure of a retaining wall and a subsequent slope movement (they refer to it as a landslide). The failure occurred in […]