NEAH BAY — Alternating traffic this weekend can slip through one lane on state Highway 112 at a slide site between Neah Bay and Sekiu.
No work will be done this weekend, said William White, maintenance lead technician with the state Department of Transportation, after crews hauled away another 1,000 cubic yards of earth and debris today from the massive slide.
“We’re done for the day,” he said from the site at 5:30 p.m. today.
“It’s still a one-lane road,” with alternating traffic, he added.
“We’ll leave it that way for the weekend,” and return to work on Monday, he said.
During the weekend, a Transportation road crew member will be at the slide moving rocks that tumble down and ensuring that the lane remains clear for traffic, White said.
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EARLIER STORY:
NEAH BAY — One lane is now open for alternating traffic through a massive slide on state Highway 112 between Neah Bay and Sekiu.
The state Department of Transportation said that one lane was opened by 9:45 p.m. Thursday.
Crews will continue efforts to reopen the both lanes of the roadway today, Transportation said, but the maintenance lead technician working on the slide said he wasn’t sure that would be accomplished.
“It depends on how it goes,” said William White, who is on the site.
“It’s raining hard. The wind’s blowing. We’re trying to be safe.”
Between 3,500 and 4,000 cubic yards of mud and debris had covered both lanes of the roadway in the slide reported at 4:46 p.m. Wednesday at Milepost 5, south of Rasmussen Creek.
By closing both lanes of the road, the slide isolated the community of Neah Bay, where the Makah tribe provided a detour for local traffic only on a logging road.
The slide ripped up several hundred feet of guardrail, shattering the posts and made a new shoulder for Highway 112 that averages 100-feet-long and 20-feet-wide, White said.
Larry Adams, maintenance supervisor of the Forks-Sekiu area for the state Department of Transportation, had estimated Thursday that a lane could not be cleared until tonight, so the crews are ahead of schedule.
White said that hundreds of loads of slide debris had been moved by early this morning.
“We had to remove many trees that where overhanging the slide area before crews could safely start.”
Debris is being hauled out by truck or pushed over the side of the road that follows the Strait of Juan de Fuca, Adams had said.
