The Ministry of Highways closed Highway 16 this afternoon from the Port Ed Turn off to Terrace, due to the flooding conditions along stretches of the highway.
They plan on issuing a further update at 8 pm.
Road updates are available from the Drive BC website.
Update: 6:00 pm
The Northern View website has passed along a Terrace Standard story which reported that one of the caused of the road closure between Prince Rupert and Terrace is a concern over a railway ballast near the Shames Mountain road, which acts as a dike of sorts between the highway and the Skeena. There is a high volume of water shooting through the ballast at the moment, a situation that has CN and Highway officials keeping close watch on the area.
Highways officials fear CN ballast could burst
By Terrace Standard
6:03:33PM, Jun 05 2007
Transportation officials are worried about the volume of the water shooting through the ballast that forms the CN track bed beside Highway 16 near the Shames turnoff west of Terrace.
"From the pictures I've seen, the water's shooting through at a tremendous rate," transportation ministry official Don Ramsay said late this afternoon. "It's almost like a firehose."
The volume is such that Ramsay and others are worried the ballast could collapse altogether.
"And if that were to happen there'd be four to six feet of water on the road," said Ramsay.
As it is, CN's track bed in that area almost acts as a dike against the rising Skeena River.
The leakage is why the Hwy16 is closed between Terrace and Prince Rupert.
Elsewhere on Hwy16, there's several feet of water east of the mudslide which closed off Hwy16 earlier this week.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment