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Storm damage closes highways
By Lynn Hotaling
N.C. 107 detoured across Cullowhee Mountain Road
Ivan may be gone, but he won’t soon be forgotten by Jackson County travelers experiencing detours and delays in his wake.
Remnants of the second major hurricane to hit Jackson County in two weeks brought torrential rains to steep terrain still saturated by downpours from Hurricane Frances eight days before.
The back-to-back storms caused widespread damage to Jackson County roads and left two county highways closed.
A large chunk of N.C. 281 collapsed Friday morning (Sept. 17) in the wake of Hurricane Ivan’s heavy rain. N.C. Department of Transportation officials hope to have one lane open sometime next week, said Jamie Wilson, DOT division construction engineer. N.C. 107 also sustained significant damage as a result of the storm with some 20 slides compromising the stretch of roadway between the Thorpe power plant and Pine Creek Road. Canada firefighter Ed Riley snapped this shot Friday morning shortly after the approximately 8:30 a.m. slide.@
Both N.C. 107, which links Sylva with Glenville, Cashiers and South Carolina, and N.C. 281, which runs from 107 at Tuckasegee to U.S. 64 near Lake Toxaway, are closed to through traffic, said Jamie Wilson, division construction engineer with N.C. Department of Transportation.
The damage on 281 is different from any of the other storm damage, Wilson said. A portion of the highway broke loose and slid about a quarter-mile down the valley, leaving a crater about 100 feet deep and 150 feet across.
DOT anticipates having one lane open to traffic sometime next week, and will later go back in and rebuild the road, Wilson said.
“I’ve never heard such a roar and crunching of trees,” said Dwight Moses, who lives about 100 yards past the slide, of the noise the section of highway made as it broke loose and slid into the cow pasture far below. “It was horrible – we’re lucky no one was killed.”
The roadway collapsed around 8:30 a.m. on Friday (Sept. 17) said Jackson County Rescue Squad member Dennis Burrell, who lives near Moses.
“I had just gone across it,” Burrell said Friday afternoon. “Then I heard it go.”
Burrell said he had noticed the pavement was slightly sunken in when he drove across it on his four-wheeler.
According to Wilson, the 281 collapse was likely caused by internal factors.
Moisture had been getting into the fill dirt in some way and probably had been for years, Wilson said.
“I believe water had saturated that fill over a period of time,” Wilson said of the slide. “It was almost liquefied – it moved with such force. I believe the rain saturated the front of the fill, and once we lost that, the whole thing went.”
Wilson said the slide “never slowed down, even when it hit the flat pasture.”
No houses were in the path of the slide, Moses said. The property where the mud came to rest belongs to heirs of the H.B. Woods family, he said, and Canada Fire Chief Steve Luker rents it as a pasture for his cattle.
Five elementary school students and two high school students live in residences on the far side of the slide, which is located between the 281/Neddie Mountain Road intersection and Wolf Creek Lake, Superintendent Sue Nations said. The five elementary students did not attend school Monday but the high school girls, both members of the volleyball team, took a roundabout way and got to school, Nations said.
N.C. 107 did not suffer a single, road-closing slide as 281 did, Wilson said. Instead, one lane is compromised in about 20 places, with two of the slides major enough that they will require some type of engineered retaining wall before they can be repaired.
107 will be closed for around three weeks, Wilson said. During that time all Cullowhee/Cashiers traffic will be detoured across Cullowhee Mountain Road (S.R. 1157) and back to 107 near Glenville.
The decision was made to close the road in order to expedite repairs, Wilson said.
“We have to close the road,” Wilson said. “We can’t get any work done if there’s traffic through there. We need people to go around.”
Damage to 107, though extensive, was caused by more predictable factors, Wilson said, with the numerous slides caused by what he termed “external” factors.
“It appears to be mostly that there was so much water on top of ground still saturated from the previous storm that the dirt slid away,” he said.
Some of the slides along 107 were caused by inadequately sized driveway culverts, Wilson said.
“That’s one of our biggest problems,” he said. “People don’t size driveway pipes correctly and the pipe won’t carry the water and the water jumps the pipe. When it comes to the road, it washes.”
U.S. 64 between Cashiers and Highlands is also in “a one-lane pattern,” Wilson said, and is closed to through traffic.
Damage has been reported to a number of secondary roads, including Norton Road in the Glenville area.
DOT crews spent Sunday repairing slides on Cullowhee Mountain Road before placing the signs that identify it as “Detour 107.”
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