UPDATE – 3:00 P.M. 02/18/2022 – The Alaska Department of Transportation is now reporting that the Seward Highway from Bird Creek to Girdwood has reopened. The weather southcentral Alaska has been experiencing as of late triggered the avalanche which closed the Seward Highway just after 5:00 a.m.
Jill Reese with the DOT summarizes what crews have been doing all day:
“First of all, you know, of course, the crews have been setting up the roadblocks so that people don’t go through the area, so they don’t run into. As soon as it became light, the avalanche experts were dispatched to go out and evaluate not only that area, but then other areas in that same area that they were expecting to probably have slides as well. So, they spent the morning up until early afternoon doing mitigation work and they actually got quite a bit to come down. They shot like 25 or 30 rounds from two different guns and created over 20 avalanches. Some of the locations, two of them left two or three feet of debris on the road, but then that’s now cleaned up, of course. Then, after that, after they did their mitigation, then they could actually start clearing, of course then all the slides, and they’ve been able to get that done.”
During the closure, crews closed the road from Ingram Creek to Indian, with the avalanche area centered at milepost 90.5, (just after the Alyeska Highway turn-off) to mile 99 at Bird Creek. Alaska State Troopers stated that the initial avalanche debris of 10-15 feet deep covered both lanes of the Seward Highway.
Commuters driving through the previously closed area are urged to proceed with caution.
UPDATE – 12:00 P.M. 02/18/2022 – Jill Reese with the Alaska Department of Transportation said DOT crews are currently doing avalanche mitigation (see below) through that region of the closed highway:
“They’re doing the mitigation on the other two locations first and then they’ll go down and check that one out. I think they were letting it settle as much as possible. It’s about 15 feet deep at some points. I don’t know the width of it, how much of the road it’s covering, but it is across both sides of the road. It’s a sizeable slide.”
ORIGINAL: The Alaska Department of Transportation is reporting the Seward Highway from Bird Creek to Girdwood is closed due to an avalanche.
DOT crews closed the road from Ingram Creek to Indian, with the avalanche area centered at milepost 90.5, (just after the Alyeska Highway turn-off) to mile 99 at Bird Creek. An update from Alaska State Troopers states that the avalanche debris of 10-15 feet deep is covering both lanes of the Seward Highway. Avalanche mitigation and the highway closure is expected to last for a prolonged period of time.
