SR 9 Emergency Slope Repair*

After 11 days of heavy rain, a hillside above the highway failed on a Friday evening, burying both lanes under 14,500 cubic yards of soil and trees and exposing the failure scarp to continued movement. The route is the only connection for 6,000 residents and a major freight link.

The owner needed a reopening in days, but the hillside remained unstable and further rain was forecast.

Our emergency crew was on site within 90 minutes of the call, working under floodlights to clear debris with excavators monitored by a geotechnical engineer and slope inclinometers. A one-lane temporary road on a buttress of imported rock was open to escorted traffic on day 6.

The permanent repair was design-built with the owner's geotechnical consultant: a soldier-pile and tieback wall with a shotcrete face and a drained backslope. All emergency force-account documentation was provided to the owner in the format required for federal emergency relief reimbursement.

The route reopened to two lanes of traffic on day 133, 17 days ahead of the owner's target. The wall instrumentation shows less than a quarter inch of movement after the first winter.

The crew worked 58,000 hours, including 22 night shifts, with 0 lost-time incidents and the owner received complete reimbursement documentation for the FHWA emergency relief claim.