Boulders are exploding in Haines. Some residents have been surprised by the sound of repeated detonations coming from a new subdivision.We went on location and chatted with the man who has been making all the noise.

 

The Hill Top subdivision is a new housing development in Haines. For a couple years now, crews have been cutting roads in the woods by the sawmill, digging trenches, and placing utilities. All this dirt moving has unearthed a number of boulders. 

The developer sees those boulders as too big, and wants broken into smaller pieces. 

So Southeast Road Builders employee Robert “Boulder” Prefontaine has been called in.

KHNS: “What is your job?”
Prefontaine: “Em… Powder monkey”

KHNS: “Can you describe what you’ve been doing today?”
Prefontaine: “Well, we’ve been disintegrating boulders. Breaking them down to handleable size. They are big granite boulders, so they are pretty tough.” 

You could say Prefontaine has explosives in his genes. He says his grandfather was a hardrock miner, and his dad started a blasting business in Oregon. Prefontaine now lives in Sitka, and travels for work, blasting  rocks on road projects around the state. He says he has been working with Southeast Road Builders off and on for 40 years. 

Prefontaine: “We’ve been up in Seward and Cooper Landing, working road projects all summer,and then on the way home, I got roped into a little boulder busting job here.”

Prefontaine stands near a jumble of boulders, some as large as a washer and dryer set. The crew has used a drill mounted on an excavator to drill a three inch hole into the heart of each boulder. 

Prefontaine cuts sections from a roll that looks like a large bratwurst. The material is lake a paste. This is the explosive. 

Prefontaine: “This stuff is a little more sensitive, but it’s not really dangerous. It’s not like the old nitroglycerin that we used to use.”

He pushes a metal cylinder the size of a crayon into the paste. This is the blasting cap. A yellow line comes from it. Prefontaine puts the charges into the holes, and fills them with gravel. He gathers the yellow lines and clips them together. In this round, he will blow up six boulders at once.

He connects the clip to a line that will allow him to detonate the charges from a couple hundred feet away. Some residents expressed surprise and annoyance when the explosions started October 24th. Prefontaines says there was probably some miscommunication. 

Prefontaine: “I guess nobody knew that we were blasting up here. I called the police station and told them I’d be blasting all day long, and apparently city hall didn’t know. But we were making noise that’s for sure.” 

Once the complaints started coming in, the Haines Police Department sent out a series of messages to inform residents

The charges are now ready. Prefontaine walks away, and takes cover behind a piece of equipment. He makes sure the area is clear.

A flash and some smoke, the boulders are split.

Prefontaine says he should be done with his work within a day. He expects to be home by the weekend.