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Sam Penrod ReportingThe latest snowstorm has UDOT preparing to resume avalanche control in Provo Canyon. It's been on hold since last winter after a shell missed it's target by several miles and landed in a family's backyard.
Residents in the Pleasant Grove neighborhood are still in shock about what happened back in March when the errant shell hit way off of its target. But UDOT says it has taken precautions to make sure it will never happen again.
UDOT uses an artillery cannon for avalanche control in Provo Canyon. Today from Chopper Five we could see crews clearing the snow away from the howitzer, so it will be available when the avalanche danger gets worse.
Nile Easton, Utah Department of Transportation Spokesman: "We just recently did a dry fire, which is going through the entire procedure like we're going to shoot, we do everything but shoot the cannon. We're going to now evaluate and see how the process worked."
Back in March the shell that was supposed to trigger an avalanche missed its target by several miles. The shell exploded in a backyard and sent shrapnel flying into the home, just feet from those inside.
Nile Easton: "We've definitely enhanced our procedures we had in place. You know it was human error. The procedures were there. It just wasn't followed properly. What we've done is add in a few more check points to try to eliminate that human error to keep it from happening again."
UDOT says because of the rugged canyon, there really are no other options to safely trigger avalanches while keeping the highway closed for the shortest amount of time. Without avalanche control, UDOT says there is a real danger, in fact there have been unexpected slides so big in the canyon they have covered the highway.
Nile Easton: "It's really one of our only ways to keep avalanches to come down unexpectedly and causing harm to people, vehicles. You know in the past when we had those kinds of situations we used to close the road completely until we could clear off the snow. And if we saw danger we could close the road. But with the cannon we can keep them open more frequently."
UDOT is still evaluating how that test fire went last week before giving the green light to actually using the cannon again for avalanche control.
