'A couple hundred thousand cubic metres' of material in Highway 97 slide zone, ministry says
CTV
The rockslide that closed Highway 97 north of Summerland this week is a repeat of a slide that occurred in 2008, and is significantly larger than the amount of debris that ended up on the roadway.
The rockslide that closed Highway 97 north of Summerland this week is a repeat of a slide that occurred in 2008, and is significantly larger than the amount of debris that ended up on the roadway, according to the provincial Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure.
In an interview with CTV News on Friday, Steve Sirett, the ministry's executive director for the Southern Interior, refused to speculate on when the road could be safe to reopen.
"We are doing a lot of work to understand when we might get to that point," he said, nothing that crews are still collecting data to try to determine the risk of further slides and what mitigation steps are necessary to prevent them.
"Unfortunately, because of the size of the slide and complexity, that is going to take some time," Sirett said. "So, at this point, I don't have an expected time of when we might get it open."
The ministry said Tuesday that the rockslide dumped about 3,000 cubic metres of material onto the roadway between Bridgeman and North Beach roads, about a kilometre north of Summerland.
That's only a "small, small portion of the slide," according to Sirett, who said officials are concerned that more rocks could fall.
"There is some pretty significant tension cracking above (the slide), you know, two to three metres wide, at least five metres deep from what we can tell now," he said. "So, the total estimated slide volume is, you know, a couple hundred thousand cubic metres of material, which is a significant amount."
