This morning's Spokesman Review Getting There contains some hard news about the construction on Highway 2.
Last Tuesday, on-site engineers for the state Department of Transportation noticed that one of the lanes of the detour was sagging and cracked. It turned out the pavement was slumping because water had weakened the road base, said Al Gilson, spokesman for the DOT in Spokane.
Not wanting to risk a collapse, the engineers ordered the southbound detour lane closed and rerouted onto one of two northbound lanes while repairs were made.
“There is no imminent danger,” Gilson said Wednesday.
Even so, the engineers didn’t want to take chances. Much of the road base and soil is made up of sand. Workers on the culvert had struck groundwater during their digging, and had been pumping the water into infiltration ponds alongside the detour route.
Gilson said water from the ponds had migrated under the roadway and apparently caused the sand to settle. “Sand being sand, it moved a bit,” he said.
The repairs were completed by Thursday and traffic was returned to the re-opened lane.
Gilson would not speculate on what might have happened if the problem hadn’t been corrected so quickly. “It’s not a crisis,” he said.
Please don't let his lack of speculation stop you from doing your own. After all, why else bring this up?
*** Update ***
Done yet? How about this?
The jagged edges of the roadway beckoned like jaws of death and basked in the orange glow of the flames from a '73 Pinto, fresh from a fill up at the Hico station and fulfilling its explosive destiny at the bottom of the chasm. Slamming the brakes with both feet, Paul brought his car to a screeching halt just three feet shy of the edge. Grabbing for his cell phone he quickly punched that important phone number every Spokane driver knows all too well.
"Come on. Come on!" he said with each ring. Finally a voice.
"Thank you for calling the Pothole Hotline..."
Try Not to Sing Along
2 months ago
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