Big Sur Highway collapse: huge chunk of California’s Highway 1 washed away

Officials from the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) said in a statement Friday that a debris flow from the hill above the roadway “submerged drainage infrastructure, crossed the freeway and eroded the road. road, resulting in the complete loss of a segment of Highway 1 “at Rat Creek, about 15 miles south of Big Sur, a mountainous part of the central coast of the state.

California Highway Patrol Officer John Yerace said he was in the area at around 4 p.m. Thursday when he noticed that “this section of road, especially the southbound lane, had fallen into the lane. ‘ocean”.

Caltrans crews discovered the debris flow Thursday and issued an emergency contract to Papich Construction in San Luis Obispo County to help with the repair. At dawn on Friday, Caltrans teams and emergency contractors arrived on the scene and found that “the two lanes of the highway were washed away”.

The damage assessment team will continue to work throughout the weekend, according to the Caltrans statement. It is not known how long the repair could take and the road will remain closed in the meantime.

Officer Yerace said that after discovering the destroyed road, he remained at the scene to keep motorists safe until he was relieved. He came back later.

“Some time during the night, before 6.30am this morning, we returned to the scene with the help of the Caltrans access and realized that the pavement was now gone,” he said.

The area where the road collapsed is about a mile south of the burn scar left by the Dolan Fire, one of the wildfires that ravaged the state last summer, Caltrans said .

Another stretch of Highway 1 reopened in July 2018, after a massive landslide in May 2017 piled tons of rock over a quarter-mile section of the highway, making it impassable and adding 13 acres on the coast.

California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency for Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties in response to winter storms that “threatened to cause mudslides and debris”, forcing the evacuation of thousands of residents, according to the statement.

At least 25 structures in northern California have been damaged as a result of mudslides and debris flows caused by a powerful river-fed atmospheric storm. Most of the affected areas are those with burn scars from previous forest fires.

CNN’s Alexandra Meeks and Sarah Moon contributed to this report.