Ministry of Transportation (MOT) workers proved they could move mountains last week as 16,000 cubic metres of debris was cleared off Highway 99 in a round-the-clock four-day effort.The highway closed late Tuesday night (July 29) and an initial estimate by transportation minister Kevin Falcon suggested the clean up would take five days.But a series of successful blasts shaved time off, and a reopening occurred just after 10 p.m. on Saturday (Aug. 2)."The cleanup went very well after the slope was stabilized," said MOT spokesperson Jeff McKnight. "Especially given the fact that the highway improvement project was happening right close by."MOT chose not to stabilize the rock face with bolts - a time-consuming process that would have added at least a day and a half to the cleanup effort according to MOT's chief geotechnical, materials and pavements engineer Michael Oliver. Instead, workers removed parts of the rock wall with four explosions.Blasting began on Thursday and continued through to Friday afternoon. About 25 workers scaled the wall and drilled explosives to break through the unstable bluff. Once the site was declared safe for workers, machinery began removing the debris, working through the night. "It was a very fast reopening because of the hard work of all the workers," McKnight said.He also noted the cleanup happened quickly because the Department of Fisheries and Oceans allowed the dumping of rock directly into the Howe Sound.Once the rocks were fully removed on Saturday afternoon, MOT could finally confirm that no one was trapped in the blast. The open road allowed for paving. It took until Sunday at noon for the railway line to be reactivated. CN Rail spokesperson Kelli Svendsen said the company would not comment on reparation.After vehicles from Squamish, Whistler and Pemberton were redirected up Highway 99 toward Lillooet to take a longer route south, the provincial government announced Friday (Aug. 1) it would undertake a $20.4 million upgrade to a 30-kilometre stretch of highway between Pemberton and Lillooet.
