Coquihalla remains closed

February 14, 2008

Drivers are scratching their heads as the Coquihalla Highway enters its seventh day without traffic.

The highway was closed last Thursday after avalanches blocked traffic just south of the snowshed between Hope and Merritt. Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon says this is the longest closure in history for the highway, due to a snow slide five metres deep covering a 50-metre stretch of road.

“In the entire life of the Coquihalla these are the worst avalanche conditions we have ever seen,” he says. “We have never had an avalanche cover four lanes of the Coquihalla before.”

Weather conditions at the site have kept maintenance crews from clearing the road.

Falcon, who flew over the site on Monday, says the avalanche only brought down one third of the snow on the mountain. As of Monday, helicopter crews have not been able to fly high enough to drop explosive charges onto the snow pack and bring the rest of it down.

“We’re into new territory here,” he says. “The scale and scope of the avalanche activity and the risk is significantly higher than anything we’ve ever seen.”

Avalanche technicians were able to begin avalanche control on Tuesday, with further avalanche control expected to continue Wednesday morning – weather permitting.

Falcon says the best case scenario would see the highway contractor VSA cleaning up all of the snow by the end of the week.

He stresses that this is an extraordinary situation, and he will not open the highway until he believes it is safe. “I’m just not going to put the public or the trucking community at risk by having them rolling the dice as they’re going through the Coquihalla,” he says.

With the go-ahead from avalanche techs, road crews from VSA Maintenance, out of Merritt, were able to begin clearing the heavy snowfall from the north end on Tuesday. Emil Anderson Maintenance crews moved out of their district to assist the interior road contractor. But it was slow going with Emil Anderson crews clearing 4 kilometres of the four-lane highway in two days - a long process of grader work due to the wet snow conditions. The grader operator has to take one pass to push the snow aside, then back up to repeat the process until the snow hits the banks. As the snow bank builds, a loader then has to move in and lift snow over - one front bucket at a time.

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Coquihalla remains closed

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