These photos were taken by Brendon Shave last night around dusk of Paul’s Slide on the west side of the highway. He drives the school bus through here 4 times a day M-Th. He believes this happened the day he took these or the day before. On the other side of the k-rail, there is 3 feet of mud or so…or there was last night at dusk. With more rain on the way, I sent these photos to Cal Trans and suggested an engineer take a look at this. I had originally scheduled this for first thing this am, but Cal Trans asked to be able to respond, so I postponed the post until I received their response.
A Cal Trans Geoengineer responded and sent me the first two photos, with the dates noted on them. The last 6 photos are by Brendon taken at dusk last night.
“I received the photographs taken by a concerned citizen of the scarp adjacent to the road at Paul’s Slide yesterday. Our Maintenance Engineering and Geotechnical personnel have been observing that location for years and documenting it through photographs during the ongoing construction project. See the attached photograph from January 6th showing very similar geometry to the photographs sent yesterday, and a photograph from October 1st showing the same scarp feature before the fill reached the roadway elevation. The scarp and down-dropped material at that location are features of the landslide that constantly move and become more visible when the contractor is not actively working to place fill over them. We do not anticipate an imminent failure there and plan to fill in the dropping area when the site dries out and the contractor can access it. Please keep in mind that Paul’s Slide Complex is an active landslide and continued movement above and below the road are expected. The Department continues to monitor and maintain the area with our Maintenance Personnel and the contractor, including active patrols during the storms this week.”
Kate/Caltrans engineers: would using a base surface of clay and bluerock slow down this rate of the West slide at all as a buffer or is it wishful thinking with any base layering one suggests?
Hum! Kate
This is not to be unexpected with the weather
looking forward to coming down. In the near future.
Hang in there. Diana
No, not unexpected, but the models are indicating a pretty bad week, next week.
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Don’t know what it’s like down in your neck of the woods, but it’s pretty wild up here… with very strong wind gusts and sheets of rain just north of the CA border.
Hope the engineers know what they’re doing!
I’m sitting here watching 100’+ fir trees painting circles in the sky!
It looks as if the road in that area is narrowed to one lane. If so, is there any sort of traffic control provided?
The slippage looks ominous; I predict some kind of failure of the slope on the ocean side of the road. I would hope they close the road at that point — a school bus should not be transporting children along there.
Yes, there are one-way synchronized traffic signals at each end. I’m guessing it will close by the weekend. Then, whether it will open up again after assessment is anyone’s guess. Lots of pressure to do so, but safety first,
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We had our winds last night. Woke me up. The whistling through my house sounded like the fog horn of a boat out to see, or really loud moaning. It is not over, just beginning it would seem. I think we are in for a long January.
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