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IRON COUNTY — A massive landslide tore through a section of state Route 14 eight miles east of Cedar City a couple weeks ago. Tuesday, we got a chance to see the incredible damage it left behind.
A massive chunk of the mountainside broke loose during the early-morning hours of Oct. 8 and tumbled more than 300 feet. It took a section of road with it, and engineers from the Utah Department of Transportation say it will take at least until June to fix it.
The UDOT engineer charged with rebuilding the road got his first aerial view of a massive landslide Tuesday aboard KSL's Chopper 5.
"A lot of heavy house-sized boulders up here," district engineer Jim McConnell said. "It's stunning. It's an amazing event."
Our roadway is displaced in certain areas from 100 feet, to 300 to 400 feet at the bottom of the canyon.
–Jim McConnell, UDOT engineer
When the earth broke loose, it crumbled the asphalt road like a cookie. On one of Utah's most scenic roads, the scenery took out the road, and kept on moving.
"We got a call around 5:30 in the morning about a small landslide," McConnell said. "Obviously, when we got here after daybreak it was a lot larger than we anticipated.
Rock, trees and dirt obliterated about a third of a mile of the road. "Our roadway is displaced in certain areas from 100 feet, to 300 to 400 feet at the bottom of the canyon," McConnell said.
The loose debris is about 100 feet deep. McConnell estimates that's about 1 million cubic yards of debris, enough to fill a football stadium.
We hiked across the debris from one end of the closed road to the other, and the scope of the devastation is hard to grasp at first. Some of the boulders are the size of homes. Trees have been snapped like twigs. Roots have been upturned, and large sections of forest actually slid down the mountain with the trees still upright and intact in the soil."
- SR 9
- SR 143 (Please note that SR 143 often experiences drifting snow forcing occasional closures)
- SR 20 (Please note that SR 9 goes through Zion National Park and a fee will be charged to use this road)
"There's a lot of recreational use up here winter and summer," said Kevin Kitchen, UDOT public involvement manager. "We've got people coming in from Las Vegas, from Arizona, the Wasatch Front, as well as locals."
SR 14 is a lifeline for business, tourism.
More than 20 year ago, similar slide broke loose just to the east. That damage took $5 million and many months to fix.
"We'll start designing the thing over the next few weeks" said Kitchen. "We'll be into January before we start lifting dirt, and hope to have the whole road open by June."
There was also a rock slide in that area in January 2009 that shut the road for several months. This one, however, is a much bigger problem for people trying to get to cabins in Duck Creek Village, Cedar Breaks National Monument, and over to Bryce Canyon National Park.
Email: jboal@ksl.com
