A rockslide shut down the Highway 15 miles from Haines on Saturday evening. One car was destroyed, but no one was injured.

 

On Saturday evening around 6.30, Mosquito Lake resident Josh Dallas was driving home. Dallas says he was driving relatively slow because of the slushy, icy road conditions. 15 miles from town, he says he saw rocks falling down the cliff. Rocks had piled high on one lane. Dallas says he hit the brakes, but couldn’t stop in time.  He says a tumbling rock pushed his car into the far lane, where he collided with other rocks, destroying his vehicle. Dallas’s neighbor arrived on scene shortly after, and they both returned to town to alert the police department. 

By Sunday morning, crews for the Alaska Department of Transportation had cleared the road. DOT engineer Travis Eckhoff was on site. 

Eckhoff: “Right now I’m just keeping an eye on the slope as we get some more precipitation coming through, just to see if there is any small pebbles or smaller rocks that will trickle down the slope. It gives you an indication of if there is any movement on the slope itself.”

The falling rocks came from just above where construction crews recently carved into the mountain to widen the highway. Ekhoff says the carved area, called an engineered cut, held in place. The rocks there are stabilized by metal pins that reinforce the cliff face.

He says it is the material above the cut that tumbled onto the road. He estimated around 3000 cubic yards came crashing down. 

Eckhoff: “So I think what we are seeing a lot across Southeast Al;aska right now is high precipitation and a lot of freeze/thaw events, those are what can trigger rock fall events similar to this.”

The rocks have kept on falling. On Tuesday morning, DOT foreman Matt Boron says crews had returned four times to the site to clear rubble.

Boron: “Just trying to keep up with it at the moment, hoping to get a contractor in with bigger equipment in the next day or two to help us clean it up better, but at the moment we are just kind of triaging.”

Boron says the rockfalls are unpredictable, but not unusual.

Boron: “This has always been an unstable area, the freeze/thaw is just exacerbating what’s always been a problem area for many many years. It is what it is, it’s mother nature at work, and it’s a hard thing to predict.”

A representative for the Haines Police Department said they will put out a Nixle alert if a rock fall is reported directly to the department.