DOT Delays Work on Landslide-Hit Highway

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Category: State News

Created on Wednesday, 03 January 2024 15:56

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By Larry Persily

Wrangell Sentinel writer

Although the Alaska Department of Transportation had hoped and planned to pave the rebuilt section of Wrangell’s Zimovia Highway in the landslide area by early this month, the weather did not cooperate and the concrete work has been postponed to at least March.

“It isn’t working out in our favor,” Chris Goins, DOT regional director for Southeast, said of the gusty winds that blew through town before and after Christmas, forcing the rescheduling.

Until it warms up and winter storms are past, drivers will see a crushed-rock surface for several hundred feet as they travel across the damaged section at 11-Mile Zimovia Highway.

Though the department planned to use a cold-cure concrete that can set up so long as temperatures stay above freezing, it was the wind that created the bigger problem, Goins explained on Dec. 26. The large insulating blankets, measuring about 6 feet by 25 feet, that crews would have used to cover the concrete while it cured would have blown away in the winds.

It also would have been costly to keep concrete workers on standby in town, waiting for a consistent stretch of good weather to pour and smooth the surface of the new pavement, he said. It would have taken more than a week in total, allowing time for one lane to cure before moving to the other lane. 

“The decision to use gravel is due to forecasted high winds and heavy rain, followed by cooler temperatures unsuitable for the proper curing of concrete,” the department posted on Dec. 23.

The state has additional rock on hand in Wrangell to fill in any potholes that develop in the temporary surface until it is paved, Goins said.

The highway was reopened to two-way traffic 24 hours a day through the patched area on Dec. 23, Goins said. New, larger culverts are in place to move runoff water under the highway, and the shoulders and drainage have been repaired after the deadly Nov. 20 landslide damaged the highway and took out about 200 feet of asphalt.

The department has concrete and all the material in town that it will need for the paving, Goins said. As soon as the weather cooperates, which he guessed at March, the contractor will go to work paving the road surface with six inches of concrete.

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