Damocles Rock

This is the slip that came down last night.

We have been watching that rock for years, it hasn't moved.

Last night it did, with it's neighbours and the area above it.

It was eerily quiet at home last night with no traffic. We want to get a look in daylight and see that nothing else looks likely to come down before letting traffic through.

Something like that falling on you would ruin your day....

You Asked For It...

I knew I was tempting fate...

The phone goes about 7p.m. "Slip at Mangaotaki"

I trundle off into the dark, and this time am confronted with a big slip, complete with boulders bigger than cars. One of them has punched a big crater into the seal and is embedded in by nearly a metre.

The panic button is pressed.

The road is closed, diversions put in place using local back roads that are pretty dodgy, and machinery is rounded up from all over.

I have just staggered in, and have a blurry photo of a rock.

The road is now open, as work continues with heavier machinery, and a relief crew.

Amazing actually. When I first saw it I couldn't imagine we could get a lane open before dawn.

I'm away to my bed...

A Day At The Office...

click for bigger

There is quite a lot going on in this series of pictures...

We are cleaning up the debris benches on Mt Messenger, getting rid of small slips.

This section of our highway is not a good place to stop heavy trucks. We try to avoid doing so.
They are either slogging up the hill and might miss a gear change and stall with a fair bit of ensuing drama, or the down hill traffic could be riding the brakes and in too high a gear.
It can be a bit stressful for the Stop/Go guys, and we all have to be on our toes.

The loader is ferrying material to the truck parked not quite off the road on the widest part of the bottom corner, the downhill Stop/Go is around there out of sight.
One of the crew is tidying up the kerb with a shovel.
We are all linked by radio on a common channel.


"Heavy coming down"


The loader has scuttled back and is hidden by the truck. You can see the difference in body language, and the guy on the shovel is also glancing back.

This is a situation where the CB radio is helpful. Hopefully the truck has been warned further up the road by a northbound mate.

I took these photo's from my truck and am also monitoring the CB channel

The truck will pass, and the process will repeat many times, but you can never relax.

One Lump, Or Two ?

In daylight we start clearing the slip that had us out in the middle of the night.
The digger cuts a track and climbs up onto the top of the slip. He can then pull down any loose rock off the cliff face.

However the digger now has a problem. It has lifted a mudstone boulder, but to load the 6 wheel truck has to swing out and the inside track is already close to lifting off the ground.

A bit of head scratching and we came up with a solution.

After dropping it onto the road, we ended up sliding it up the tray of my truck.

I then drove rather gingerly as it wobbled about on the back.

Roadworks in progress.

AA ROADWATCH

Current Incidents: North Island
SH3 between Awakino and Piopio
Land Slip - Extreme care required

Another morning, another slip. Just a dark mass in the headlights where there should be road. When there is torrential rain you can be on them before you know it. An SUV driver before me found that out, and the local mechanic made a few bucks.

The first thing we try and do is give some warning.
We will either stay there and use our flashing yellow lights, or get some road cones and signs out.

We get a sign truck on site, and set up a full set of signs with speed restrictions.
At the depot the front end loader is loaded onto a transport trailer and towed out by a six wheel truck.

Soon we are back and forth, carting away from the loader to the nearest tipping site.
If it is a short cart we can really make inroads quickly.
If we have to go any distance it can be a long job.
Today we only had to go half a kilometre.
There may be gates to open and close.(stock in the paddock)
The other problem is soft ground at the tip site. Trucks chew up the ground quickly.
In no time you and the truck are covered in mud.
The truck tail gate can be swung to open like a door.
Slips are full of tree roots, trees & branches, and big rocks.
I usually swing the tail gate open and closed, it is better than having a huge muddy mass jammed up, if you open it normally, from inside the truck.
The down side is that you stop at the tip site;
Get out of the truck,open the paddock gate, drive in.
Get out of the truck. Swing the Tail Gate open.
Get back into the truck. Tip off the load.
Get out of the truck. Close the tail gate.
Get in the truck. Drive through the gate.
Get out of the truck, close the gate.
Drive to Site, Repeat, X times.
It is of course pissing down.

And Yet we get a buzz out of getting our road open.
It's our job.

A car-breaking rock, part of a slip I discovered early this morning. Then it was all hands to the potholes. I reckon we shovelled 5 tonnes of premix into holes today. So all you get is a crumby photograph. I must away to the couch.

Soft Mud

Cleaning the roadside drains, and culverts is a messy job.
The eels aren't too keen on it either.
Here one is making a break for it at our tipping site.
It is lucky one of my mates didn't spot him or he would have ended up on his menu.
They don't do anything for me unless smoked and even then I have to have had a few beers first.

Driving a truck with fairly shallow sides, and a load that is mostly liquid mud is interesting, a bit like bike riding with a bowl of soup. You have to be a bit cunning and use all the camber on the corners, dropping the wheels on to the road shoulder if need be. Of course if you brake hard, you wear the lot.

There is something though about drains, diggers and mud. I suppose it is the small boy thing.
I like it.

Hard Rock

We have had a few slips over the last few days.
A slip is usually a soft muddy thing if you have misfortune to suddenly arrive on one in the middle of a rainy night.
This one was very hard. It came down in "Downers Cutting" in the Uruti Valley.
If you hit one of these boulders, the boulder would win.
Our front end loader was struggling to lift them, and even the short drop onto the tray causes an almighty bone jarring crash. You soon learn to get out of the truck, or you get fired into the roof.
They fell from over 50 metres, off a steep bank.
Some time ago in the same spot a fully laden semi trailer hit a similar mudstone boulder at 3 a.m. in the morning.
It tore the whole front suspension out of the truck, which then careered across the road and through a paddock, nearly ending up in a river.

Dragged out of bed at 3.30 am this morning, slips & rocks on the road. The fringe of the weather system that is causing carnage in the Bay Of Plenty will hit us soon. Reports coming in from there have the rescue services very stretched and very tired. We also had the worst road smash in a long time yesterday, the guys attending (north of us) said it was like a car bomb had detonated.

Slips & Landslides (progress report)

I am in the process of posting about slips & landslides I have known. But I seem to have got somewhat waylayed while looking for a suitable image. How was I to know that one must wade through a zillion pictures of lingerie. Still, in the interests of quality blogging, I shall plow on.............