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ALDOT Plans Twin Bridges Over U.S. 231 Landslide Thousands in Service!
Vol. XXI • No. 9
“The Nation’s Best Read Construction Newspaper… Founded in 1957.”
Your Alabama Connection • Rich Olivier, Atlanta, GA • 1-800-409-1479
By Eric Olson CEG CORRESPONDENT
A dramatic combination of large pavement cracks and an underground landslide on U.S. Highway 231 near Huntsville, Ala., in the early morning hours of Feb. 13 prompted an immediate closure of roughly 1,000 ft. of the major four-lane highway. Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey quickly issued a state of emergency to jumpstart the work of creating detours, cleaning up the damage and developing a sustainable plan to fix the important route. Since then, the Alabama DOT has been overseeing efforts to rebuild the highway along the side of one of
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the Brindlee Mountains, a range of hills in the area with elevations up to 1,300 ft. high. The destroyed portion of road is seven miles south of Huntsville, near Laceys Spring in Morgan County. No one was injured during the slide. Relentless Rain Led to Road Failure After studying the accident’s causes, engineers found that the slide was about 50 ft. below both the northbound and southbound highway. The cracks and eventual failure of the roadway were found to be the result of heavy rains that pounded North Alabama over the winter and has still been falling during cleanup operations. see LANDSLIDE page 2
Reed Contracting is using an ensemble of excavators, dump trucks, rock haulers and other heavy equipment to clear about 200,000 cu. ft. of debris from the site of the U.S. 231 underground landslide.