ASHEVILLE CITIZEN - TIMES
WATERVILLE - A five-member team from a Canadian contractor is expected to begin installing rock bolts Tuesday into the cleared rock face left behind by the Interstate 40 rock slide.
The 30-foot-long steel bolts are designed to keep loose boulders on the crumbling mountainside from moving. Over the year, similar rock bolts have been installed at several spots along I-40 in Haywood County.
"Bolts work," said Corry Goumans, a foreman with Pacific Blasting, Demolition and Shoring, the British Columbia company handling the work. "What they're doing here is exactly the same thing we do at home."
"We're used to working in tougher, steeper terrain," said company vice president Ron Elliott in a telephone interview.
Last week, state Department of Transportation officials decided they wanted the rock bolts installed before allowing the interstate to be reopened to traffic. No target date for reopening the road's eastbound landes to two-way traffic has been announced.
The interstate has been closed since July 1.
Here is a timeline of events at the rock slide:
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OF SLIDE AREA  |
Lin Riley
The greatest challenges we have to face on this project is bringing all of the unstable material off of the mountain with minimum impact to the surroundings, while making sure our personnel and equipment remain safe. This work actually requires more "feel" than engineering. I say this because engineering is more of an exact science and we are constantly uncovering new situations that require us to modify our procedures.
Other than safety for our personnel and machinery, access to the slide is the most difficult problem we face. Progress is slow because of the safety risks to our employees. Imagine trying to clean your gutters on a steep roof with a bunch of rocks on the very top. One wrong move and you're dead! Not only do you have to be careful of falling, but also of what may fall on you. It's hard to imagine until you have actually been asked to get on a piece of heavy equipment and make it to the top of this slide. We have actually had a couple of employees drive off and say "I'm not going up there with that piece of equipment ..... you're crazy!" It's really quite scary.
We are working in a very limited area and gaining the 500 to 600 vertical feet required to get to the top also means you must have enough horizontal distance as well. Our equipment is capable of traversing steep ground but slopes steeper than 1.5 vertical to 1 horizontal becomes impossible. This means in order to gain 500 vertical feet, a minimum of 750 horizontal feet must be achieved. The total width of the slide area is less than 200 feet so you can see we must have several switch backs to get to the top.
The geological formations in the area also severely limit access. Both sides of the slide are founded on solid rock pitched at a very steep angle. This means that a portion of our access road must be within the "face" of the slide. As we bring the slide down by pushing the material off of the face, we are constantly covering up our access. Quite a catch 22!!
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The side of the mountain has released it's fury. The problem was stopping further slides. |
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To begin their work, the crew had to make their own roads up beyond the top of the slide. All the while making sure they didn't start further slides themselves. |
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When the workers removed the debris, more would fall onto the road. This was a rockslide of enormous proportions. |