Mudslide Clean-Up Continues; Highway 395 Open

Thunderstorm-caused mudslide at Dunmovin, California, pushes a big rig off the northbound U. S. Highway 395 and into a culvert on Thursday, August 26, 2010. Video captured by Jeff Bradshaw of Laguna Niguel shows mud flowing from the southbound lanes and across the divided highway.

Written by Benett Kessler
Sierra Wave

After last Thursday's horrendous flood and mudslide across Highway 395 south of Olancha, Caltrans and others have worked constantly to clear the highway and now to free a big rig that was pushed down into a culvert by the flood.

Susan Lent, PIO of Caltrans, said that the roads are open, but there is a lot of clean-up to do. Intermittent lane closures continue as crews work to clean things up.

Lent said that an Incident Command meeting would take place at the mudslide site on Tuesday among representatives of Caltrans, the CHP, BLM, the Forest Service and DWP. Officials planned to discuss completing clean-up and removal of the big rig which is blocking a culvert.

The initial mudslide had caused complete closure of Highway 395 for several hours. Some motorists headed back to Ridgecrest and detoured through Death Valley although initially Highway 190 was closed due to flooding.

Crews were able to restore northbound and southbound traffic flow, although restricted, by Friday.

Blasting in Mountain Pass to temporarily close Interstate 15

FROM STAFF REPORTS
Desert Dispatch

MOUNTAIN PASS — Caltrans will close portions of Interstate 15 near Mountain Pass in the mornings of June 17, 18, 24 and 25 while blasting takes place near the freeway.

The blasting, part of Caltrans expansion and rehab project for I-15 in the area, will take place at 7 a.m. and close the interstate for about 15 minutes, according to a release from Caltrans.

I-15 will be closed during this time from just north of Bailey Road and south of Nipton Road in both directions.

Northbound I-15 reopened at border

By AARON AUPPERLEE, City Editor
Desert Dispatch

KINGSTON ROAD — The northbound lanes of Interstate 15 near the Nevada state line have been reopened and cleaned.

An oil spill from an overturned semi truck caused the closure on Wednesday morning at about 7 a.m. Shelly Lombardo, a spokeswoman for Caltrans, said the roadway reopened at 3:51 a.m. Thursday morning.

Lombardo said the Caltrans maintenance department did not report any damages to the roadway, and Greg Veigler, a hazardous material specialist for San Bernardino County, said he does not expect any soil or water contamination. The motor oil was pure, he said, and free of any contaminates. He said the roadway had been cleaned with large vacuums, steam and pressure washers and a lot of kitty litter.

“It’s completely cleaned off the highway and shoulders,” Veigler said. “Just splashes of it made it off the road.”

Veigler said the oil that left the roadway ended up in an abandoned drainage ditch once used by Molycorp, a Colorado-based mining company that owns a mine in the Mountain Pass area. Crews will return to the site on Tuesday to finish cleaning up that oil but will have to use shovels and wear respirators because the site is contaminated with low levels of uranium waste, Veigler said.

Crews worked through the night to clean up the 1,500 to 2,000 gallons of oil that spilled from the truck. California Highway Patrol Officer Matt Sais said the truck was carrying oil containers ranging from five gallons to 200 gallons. When the truck overturned, many of the containers ruptured, Sais said.

The CHP approved a detour route around the stretch of the I-15 that was closed about 15 miles south of the Nevada state line.

I-40 bridge work speeds along

A dozen bridges demolished, replaced in 14 months

San Bernardino Sun
Andrew Silva, Staff Writer

Twenty-eight days.

A contractor working for Caltrans tore down a bridge and erected a new one on Interstate 40 in less than a month.

And that was only one of 12 bridges demolished and replaced in 14 months on the southern edge of the Mojave National Preserve.

"It's pretty amazing," said John Diskin, chief engineer for Skanska USA, the contractor that did the accelerated work.

The final bit of work is scheduled to be completed this week.

In March 2006, Caltrans engineers discovered the 12 bridges - six in each direction of the divided interstate - were failing along a 17-mile stretch between Kelbaker and Essex roads.

While planning and building road projects usually moves along like a snail with stomach cramps, the state can blaze through a project if it's an emergency.

"When it's a dire situation, the state has the ability to go around normal avenues to get a project done sooner," said Traci Peterson, a spokeswoman for Caltrans.

This time the state required some innovative construction techniques, including the first-ever use of precast bridge abutments, installed on the Marble Wash Bridge about 80 miles east of Barstow.

And all 12 bridges used precast and prestressed girders, dramatically cutting down on the construction time.

On the dozen bridges, built in the early 1970s, the steel rods that secured the bridge decks to the pillars had sheared and the concrete was eroding.

Traffic was reduced to one lane on each bridge and the speed limit was lowered to 45 mph.
After the bridges were temporarily shored up, traffic in both directions was diverted onto the westbound side, and Skanska started demolishing the six eastbound bridges, one a day.

The $35 million project basically became an assembly-line operation, with crews working on all the bridges at once, moving from one to the next as each step was finished.

"We put together a tight schedule and kept to it," Diskin said. "Everybody, including the subcontractors, just bought into the project. It was just one of those things that really clicked."

It took only four months to complete the six eastbound bridges. Then the crews switched to the westbound side.

The precast girders, assembled by Pomeroy Corp. in Perris, meant crews didn't have to build them in place.

The real innovation was bringing in already completed abutments, the beefy ends of the bridge that support the whole thing. Each weighed roughly 180,000 pounds.

It took only a few hours using a 500-ton crane to lift the abutments off flatbed trailers and drop them in place.

That compares to several weeks to set up forms, create the steel mesh of rebar and then pour the concrete and let it set.

Diskin said next time, he'd prefer the abutments perhaps be in two parts, which could then be joined.

"They were definitely big chunks of concrete," he said.

The Marble Wash bridge was demolished in a little more than a day on March 30 and opened to traffic April 26.

"This is an amazing accomplishment when you consider the size of this structure and its remote location," Hector Davila, Caltrans deputy director of construction, said in a written statement.

It's even more impressive if you consider the crews took Sundays off. That means the bridge was actually built in 24 working days.

Vegas factor plagues small town's traffic

Yermo residents know when heading out for an errand is useless.

By Jonathan Abrams, Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times

YERMO, CALIF. — For the millions of gamblers motoring toward Vegas on Interstate 15, this tiny town dotted by billboards and gas stations hardly registers.

But for residents in the desert hamlet of 4,200, plunked midway between Los Angeles and Nevada, the conga line of Sin City revelers makes even the simple task of driving to the grocery store a major headache.

"It's been this way forever," said Geoff Berner, 57, who has lived in Yermo for nearly a quarter-century. "As a local, you just accept that it is what it is and either plan the extra time or don't go out at all."

The usual weekend traffic jam has mushroomed because of a repaving project on Interstate 15 near town, where as many as 75,000 vehicles speed by on weekends. The construction is part of a major Caltrans project that will resurface 50 miles of interstate and build a 4.6-mile truck-climbing grade north of town.

"They haven't seen any work up there for a while," Caltrans spokeswoman Terri Kasinga said. "Due to deterioration from weather and truck traffic, this repaving was necessary."

The project could add an hour to a Vegas trip, but work halts Saturdays and Sundays, Kasinga added.

Berner compared the weekend gridlock to a weekday in downtown Los Angeles, when commuters crawl to the Westside in the afternoon.

Because Yermo is devoid of major supermarkets, department stores and hospitals, residents must drive to Barstow or Victorville for major necessities.

"I would be crazy to try and go to Barstow, Victorville or Los Angeles on a Friday or Sunday," said Berner, who first gauges traffic on the 15 before going on errands.

So Yermo residents often resort to alternate routes, such as Interstate 40 or surface roads, to circumvent the Vegas crunch.

"We use those other roads when you can literally go out on the 15 and sell lemonade from car to car because traffic is so bad," said Mike Henderson, 55, a 16-year resident and chairman of the Yermo Community Service District.

Yermo, the last town on the highway before the Mojave National Preserve, can boast of a little more history than the average highway pit stop.

It was a major filming site for the 2003 film "Hulk" and has a nifty 1950s-themed diner named Peggy Sue's. And Calico, a tourist ghost town restored by Walter Knott, the founder of Knott's Berry Farm, is just north of the town.

Yermo — Spanish for "desert" or "barren" — was once named Otis after Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, who founded the Los Angeles Times and owned several mines in the area, said Steve Smith, vice president of the Mojave River Valley Museum in Barstow.

In 1905, the Postal Service changed the name to Yermo — possibly because of a clash between Otis and the local miners union, although that is just local lore, Smith said.

The town became a well-traveled train stop and still is home to a Union Pacific terminal.

As crowded as the area gets, motorists do not contribute heavily to the town's economy, Henderson said.

Drivers usually exit the freeway only to bypass backups on it. Most refuel in Barstow and, as a result, Yermo has turned from a thriving area to a bedroom community. The town has lost about six motels and 25 gas stations in the last 35 years, he said.

"The traffic doesn't generate a great amount of revenue at all," Henderson said. "People blow through this town at 65 miles an hour when the speed limit is 45. They leave before we get a chance to catch them."

Fred Sandridge, 78, a 35-year resident, said careless drivers eager to get to or from Las Vegas only multiply the problem.

"There's no way you get out there in the Vegas traffic when it is busy," Sandridge said. "There's a lot of reckless driving. People speed, they push and drive like maniacs. That's why there are accidents here, and then things really slow down."

Caltrans is repaving the freeway from Main Street in Barstow to Rasor Road, a little past Yermo. Work began in April and is scheduled to run through next summer at a cost of $54 million, Kasinga said.

Because of that project and another to the south, construction on the interchange between Interstate 15 and 215, Caltrans is advising motorists to add plenty of time for Las Vegas trips.

Yermo residents have reluctantly become accustomed to the construction and its delays, an outlook that isn't as prevalent in the Wrightwood area and Phelan. There, motorists have made death threats against construction workers and sabotaged equipment over delays caused by safety improvements to Highway 138 over the summer.

"We'll never to get to that point," Berner said, chuckling. "Most people living here have been here awhile and know what the traffic deal is."