On Monday night, DOT crews were able to open up the Sterling Highway near mile point 50 in Cooper Landing to two lanes. The guardrail also was replaced as it was swept downhill during the landslide on Saturday night. Long delays are expected.
Shannon McCarthy with the DOT provided an update:
“We have a really similar schedule that we had yesterday. We have to get our maintenance workers in and continue to shore up the road. We are closing it down for an hour at a time and then keeping it open for an hour at a time. Yesterday was really difficult for them to try to keep that even/odd hour schedule, which is something I talked about with them. They are not going to do that because they got so far off of schedule that it wasn’t really helpful to the public. They are going to keep it open for an hour, do northbound then southbound and then they’ll close it, do the work and get back off the road. They will try to keep those closures as short as possible, but we are warning people that you could be waiting an hour.”
McCarthy says that the rainy weather hasn’t helped in the clean-up of the roadway:
“It really hasn’t helped that the soil, I mean the whole reason why it sloughed off was because the soil became a heavy, wet and saturated. It is not helping. We are still having the sloughing going on and having to clear it. It’s not great for work conditions and certainly not good to get the area stabilized.”
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