UPDATE FOR TUESDAY, Feb. 23 from the Oregon Department of Transportation:
- The 12-hour closures between Cape Perpetua south of Yachats to Tenmile Creek will stay in place from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. all this week, including Saturday.
- Flaggers will let travelers through on one lane at Bray’s Point, where the repair work is being done, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. each night this week, including Saturday.
- During the daytime closure Saturday, the contractor will try to remove the drilling equipment from the rocks below during the regular 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. closure. This is a change — and sooner than expected — in the schedule. Whether this can be done as expected Saturday, will be determined by the end of the day Thursday.
- Once the drilling equipment is retrieved, then the road will reopen around the clock with flagging through the one-way area where the contractor is rebuilding the highway.
- “As long as everything is OK, they plan to go to 24-hour flagging” after the drill is retrieved, said Angela Beers Seydel, an ODOT spokeswoman.
UPDATE FOR MONDAY, FEB. 22 from the Oregon Department of Transportation:
- The 12-hour closures between Cape Perpetua south of Yachats to Tenmile Creek will stay in place from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. all this week.
- Flaggers will let travelers through on one lane at Bray’s Point, where the repair work is being done, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. each night this week.
- A two-day full closure of the road is scheduled to start Monday so wreckers can haul the drilling equipment from the rocks below Bray’s Point. But it could happen sooner, depending on how work goes this week.
- Once the drill is hauled up and the two-day closure is finished, there will be two weeks of flagging on one lane in order for contractors to complete the repair project.
–– Quinton Smith/YachatsNews
By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
Patrick La Nassa was just trying to get from Lincoln City back home to Florence in time for a scheduled COVID-19 shot Wednesday afternoon.
Zee Smith, who lives in the San Francisco Bay area, is just trying to get to a nursing job that begins at 8 a.m. Monday in Newport.
Both had to figure out a way to get around a daytime closure of a four-mile section of U.S. Highway 101 between Yachats and Florence as a state contractor takes up to seven days to shore up a cliff and repair the highway that collapsed a week ago.
On a scenic section of a coastal lifeline that sees up to 5,000 vehicles a day, they are not the only ones.
Some looked for routes around the closure using back roads – which the Siuslaw National Forest is strongly discouraging. Some sought shortcuts between Florence and Eugene that would take them to Corvallis or Philomath and then back to the coast on Oregon Highways 20 or 34.
Others, judging from the traffic racing north after 7 p.m. Wednesday, adjusted their schedules to wait for flaggers to open the road at night.
“We try to do everything we can to keep the highway open,” said Phil Wurst, an Oregon Department of Transportation geo-technical engineer from Salem who was on his way to the repair site Wednesday. “We prefer not to work at night unless it’s an extreme emergency.”
ODOT initially announced it would close the stretch of U.S. 101 around the clock while a contractor stabilized the cliff and rebuilt the road. But the contractor decided it was not safe enough to work at night, so ODOT agreed to a 12-hour daylight closure instead.
An old retaining wall holding up part of U.S. Highway 101 near Bob’s Creek gave away while crews were working on it Friday.
Old rock wall giving away
The issue is a small section of a 95-year-old wall holding up the edge of the highway at Bray’s Point, just south of Bob Creek. It was discovered failing in January, and ODOT brought in GeoStabilization International of Colorado last week to reinforce it.
But as GeoStabilization drilling equipment and operator Austin Miller were working last Friday, the wall collapsed and sent the drill and Miller to the rocks 150 feet below. Miller, 28, of Spencer, Iowa, was taken to Peace Harbor Medical Center in Florence, treated for bumps and bruises and released – which everyone agrees is miraculous.
The retaining wall — rocks and grout — that collapsed was part of the original highway construction project and is at least 95 years old, said Angela Beers Seydel, an ODOT spokeswoman.
“It was getting more and more unstable and creating cracks in the road,” she said. “Then it just failed.”
Leda Hermecz of Westates Flagging talks to Patrick La Nassa on Wednesday at a U.S. Highway 101 blockade south of Yachats as he tried to get home to Florence.
ODOT has flaggers and blockades at Cooks Chasm/Thor’s Well on Cape Perpetua in the north and at Tenmile Creek in the south, areas where larger vehicles can turn around. Local residents – not sightseers — will have access beyond the closures, but there is no way past the work at Bray’s Point from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
The work started Wednesday and is expected to take 5-7 days at an estimated cost of $400,000.
When the road is closed during the day, crews will shore up the cliff by drilling long, hollow screws into it and then pouring concrete grout into the hole and screws, slowly working to the west.
“It’s kind of like putting steel reinforcing bars in after the fact,” said Wurst. “We knew this wall was in trouble. It’s just old rubble rock and grout … and there’s no steel in it.”
Once the repair project is complete, the contractor will bring in large wreckers to drag the 28-ton drill up from the rocks below. That is expected to take several days and will close the road entirely.
People can check to see when the highway reopens by going online to www.TripCheck.com or by calling 5-1-1 for the current road status.
ODOT has warning signs on U.S. 101 at Newport, Waldport, north of Yachats and Florence, and on Oregon 126 in Florence and Veneta.
U.S. Highway 101 at Cook’s Chasm/Thor’s Well on Cape Perpetua is closed to all but local residents from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily until a section of the highway farther south is repaired.
The search for alternate routes
A spokeswoman for the Siuslaw National Forest said that while forest roads “theoretically could be used to get around the road closure” they are not maintained for regular use by passenger vehicles, and may be damaged or blocked by debris or trees knocked down by winter storms.
“We would not encourage people to plan to use these roads except in case of emergency, and if they do they should be prepared to encounter rough travel and downed trees and debris,” said spokeswoman Lisa Romano.
A Yachats-area woman said she drove Forest Service roads around the closure this week – taking 1½ hours to make the trip between Yachats and Florence.
“One lane traffic with debris, potholes, gravel, blind corners, leaning trees and surface drops,” she wrote in a Facebook message. “It is doable but I don’t recommend it.”
The four-times-a-day bus service between Yachats and Florence operated by the Lane Council of Governments has suspended trips until the highway reopens entirely.
ODOT has community service employees who normally call businesses and other organizations affected by a major road closure. But those employees are in Salem, which was without power for much of five days this week and last because of ice storms.
That resulted in vacation rental companies, businesses and worried travelers calling ODOT instead, said Beers Seydel.
GeoStabilization co-workers and passersby use a long climbing rope to help haul a drill equipment operator from the rocks 150 feet below U.S. Highway 101 after the road collapsed Friday.
Eyewitness to Friday rescue
Gabrielle Colton of North Bend was headed to a photo shoot near Cape Perpetua last Friday when she came upon the construction accident. She was the second car; the one in front of her saw it happen, Colton said in an interview with YachatsNews.
The area has no cell service and no one had radios to call 9-1-1 and alert Siuslaw Valley Fire and Rescue in Florence.
But the people in the first car happened to have a long, but very tangled, climbing rope.
“Thank God they had a rope,” Colton said.
As Miller’s co-workers rushed to the scene, the passersby started untangling the rope and dropping it over the side of the cliff. Colton estimated it took 20 minutes to get the rope down to Miller.
“He had crawled out of the equipment, but wasn’t badly injured,” Colton said.
Siuslaw Valley Fire & Rescue responders get ready to take GeoStabilization employee Austin Miller to Peace Harbor Medical Center in Florence last Friday after his drill fell 150 feet to the rocks below U.S. Highway 101 at Bray’s Point.
Miller tied the rope around his waist and began working his way up the cliff, sometimes being pulled up and other times climbing on his own.
“He was climbing as much as he could,” Colton said.
It took another 20 minutes for Miller to reach the road. Colton said a doctor also happened upon the accident and checked him over before ambulance crews arrived.
“It was crazy. It was wild,” Colton said. “He was just smiling and was so happy … and we were all so amazed he was alive.”
To see an Oregon Department of Transportation drone video of the landslide at Bray’s Point, go here