Commuters driving on state Highway 38 met an impassable wall of boulders near Elkton after a massive landslide took out the road on Tuesday, forcing some people to add hours to their commutes.

The closure wasn’t expected to end until Saturday.

But what a difference two days and the Oregon Department of Transportation made on this landslide-prone stretch of highway.

By Thursday night, the eastbound lane of the highway had reopened. On Friday morning, the gigantic rocks were nowhere in sight.

Allen Deaton, an ODOT maintenance manager who handles the highway from Reedsport to Interstate 5, attributed the quick cleanup to a partnership between contractor Haley Construction of Canyonville, ODOT and Douglas Electric Cooperative. The electric company re-established power after lines also were taken out by Tuesday’s landslide.

“It was a mess. Large rocks across both lanes of traffic as darn near as tall as the power lines. I thought it was the largest rock I had seen on the highway,” Deaton said Friday morning at the slide site at milepost 27, nine miles west of Elkton near the Sawyer’s Bar area. The largest of the rocks was described as 30-by-30 feet by an ODOT spokesman.

Haley Construction used hydraulic rock hammers, drills and some explosives to reduce the gargantuan rocks into manageable pieces that were then hauled off to ODOT stockpiles along the highway. About three-fourths of the removed rock will be used for embankments and repairs for future slides, said ODOT spokesman Jared Castle. Cleanup and repair work to the road’s surface is expected to continue through Friday.

Now, coated in gravel and populated by heavy machinery, flaggers and a pilot car that leads vehicles from one side of the site to the other, the road isn’t too much the worse for wear after the two-day closure.

“We were able to get one lane open considerably faster than we had anticipated,” said Deaton, in a hard hat and mud-caked shoes, adding he was pleased with the fast-paced work. “It’s important for us to make sure that we are getting it open in a timely manner as possible.”

He explained the department wanted to lessen the impact on local businesses and organizations that rely on the roadway, by opening one lane as quickly as possible and then keeping wait times to under 20 minutes if not less. During the closure, commuters were directed to use state highways 42 and 126 as alternative routes.

Local impacts

According to several businesses, the effects were much lighter than anticipated.

Peggisue Miller, the manager of the Economy Inn in Reedsport, said the closure didn’t hurt the motel at all, as guests cut through Eugene and then through Florence to get to their destinations.

 “It wasn’t a big deal,” Miller said, adding late fall and winter are quiet seasons for the Economy Inn.  “We didn’t have anyone who came in here that didn’t already know it was closed.”

Lavonda Cabbiness, the manager of the Salbasgeon Inn of the Umpqua, located about seven miles from Reedsport on 38, said she felt some impacts.

“Whenhighway 38 is closed, it affects us,” she said, adding business dropped off during the closure.

Cabbiness said she was first concerned when she learned of the slide, as one that occurred on the highway in 2006 kept her own husband from returning home. But, “They get it cleaned real fast. ODOT’s good about getting it done at a quick pace.”

Sports teams from North Bend High School bumped up home and away games by 30 minutes, said Athletics Director Boyd Bjorkquist on Thursday.

One man had some trouble with the closure.

Christopher Clarke, a clinic administrator for South Coast Orthopedic Associates in Coos Bay, lives in Drain. Used to driving approximately 90 minutes to work each day, Clarke said the closure easily added another hour to his long commute. On the night of the slide, he drove 41⁄2 hours to get home, after hearing the bad news.

While he was inconvenienced by the slide, Clarke said he’s impressed by ODOT’s hard work.

“For as much debris as there was on there, I think they did an outstanding job. I expected the road to be completely closed through this weekend. There was a whole lot of rock,” Clarke said.  

Since the road was partially reopened, Clarke said his wait hasn’t been much longer than five minutes.

Repairing 38

Attributed to last weekend’s storm, the landslide hit at approximately 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, spilling rocks and other debris across nearly 200 feet of highway. Upon removing nearly 5,000 cubic yards of rock and dirt from the road and material from the slope to prevent future slides, Deaton said workers found the road had been damaged. Repairs are estimated to exceed $200,000.

“At this time we’ve seen (that the) asphalt weathered better than we had thought, but there are some significant craters where the rocks came to rest,” Deaton said, adding workers will repair the base of the road before repaving it. “It wasn’t was so much the amount of the material but the size of the material that came down that was the biggest headache.”

Tuesday’s slide isn’t the first the road has experienced, Deaton said. Among recent landslides include two that closed Highway 38 for a night in January 2006.

The slides covered the road in mud, vegetation and large boulders from milepost 10, near the Loon Lake intersection, to milepost 29, five miles west of Elkton.

While this slide was a bit more troublesome due to the size of the boulders, Deaton said that the partnership between Douglas Electric and the construction company made the task a bit more manageable.

“It made a tougher job a little easier,” Deaton said of working with Douglas Electric and Haley Construction. “It definitely impacted the speed and ability to get this one lane open in a timely manner.”

To get up-to-date road condition information, those interested can visit http://www.Tripcheck.com, or call 511 or (800) 977-6368.