"It was like somebody shooting a fire hose into a sand pile," said Pat
Creedican, District Manager for the Highway Division of the Oregon Department
of Transportation in Bend.
As the road slowly collapsed, one of the first drivers to come upon the slide
was either unable to see or avoid the hole in time and broke the axle of his
semi-truck. Other drivers were alerted and there were no other accidents,
according to ODOT.
The fine material washed down the hillside, tearing out trees and burying
portions of Camp Davidson between Suttle and Blue lakes below.
The camp's maintenance shop was buried to the roof and a couple of trucks
and a back hoe were overrun.
The flow was remarkably solid; one could walk right over the top of it,
according to Paul Williamson of the U.S. Forest Service.
The gap in the highway extended nearly 100 feet by the time repairs could
begin. The guard rail and posts, suspended above the void, slowly swayed in
winds still driving tropical rains into an Oregon normally braced for
February's ice and snow.
Todd Taylor of Hap Taylor & Sons said their plan was to build a "toe" of
large boulders, three and four feet across, at the bottom of the rift. Heavy
equipment would then layer and pack smaller material back up the hillside to
rebuild the road bed.
Regional Engineer Dale Allen said that Taylor & Sons was chosen for the
repair on the basis of who had the equipment and material available to do the
job, which could cost between $300,000 and $500,000 when paving is complete.
Much of that amount is expected to come from federal emergency funds, Allen
said.
Taylor & Sons had some of the needed material in their Redmond yard and
were able to organized the trucks, including local haulers from Sisters.
Deschutes County volunteered their 10-yard trucks and provided boulders from a
location on Camp Polk Road, according to ODOT's Creedican.
While the equipment needs were not tremendous, with only room for a large
bulldozer, an excavator, a roller and a loader perched on the hillside, at
times eight or nine trucks lined up to drop their loads of fill to be pushed
into the hole.
About 20,000 yards of replacement material was brought in to repair the breach,
according to Pat Creedican. This material was hauled in two 12-hour shifts per
day between various loading points, some as far away as Redmond. There were
about 1,200 truckloads, or 18 trucks per hour through Sisters, Creedican said,
followed by 600 tons of asphalt.
A thousand yards of rock from on top of the Santiam Pass were delivered by
highway maintenance crews from the Santiam Junction and snaked westward in a
long continuous pile close to the hill, on the other side of the rift from
Sisters, waiting to be used as the last layer before gravel was put down.
Creedican said they hoped to have the road paved and open for two-lane travel
by 10 a.m. on Tuesday, on the seventh day after the hillside collapsed. He said
it would only take a few extra hours to complete the paving, and with traffic
still stalled on the other side by washouts and landslides, now was a good time
to finish the job.
Even then, travel would be limited to Highway 126 toward Eugene, since Highway
22 to Salem was still cut several miles east of Idanha and Highway 20 to
Albany had a major slide that could take another week to repair.
