As these videos show, working for ADOT can be a real blast

By Tom Herrmann / ADOT Communications

We’ve said it all along: Working for ADOT can be a real blast.

Widening, repairing or creating highways in Arizona can mean moving a lot of earth – sometimes through blasting. For example, it took 100,000 pounds of explosives to remove 125,000 cubic yards of dirt and rocks to widen US 60 between Oak Flat and Devils Canyon. You can see some of those explosives in use here:

Reopening US 89 after a landslide near Page required blasting as well. And ADOT's cameras where there to capture it:

Last week on SR 77 between Winkelman and Globe, as a crew blasted overhanging rock to reduce the risk of pieces falling onto the roadway below, an 18-foot-tall boulder fell 150 feet onto the highway surface. It took four hours longer than expected to reopen the highway because of the time required to break up this huge rock.

The image at right doesn't begin to do this rock justice, so click it if you want to see the boulder at full size.

Rocks often break at naturally occurring joints. Sometimes, those natural breaking spots are beneath the surface and provide us with a surprise. When crews set off explosive charges like this one, most of the rocks fall where we expect them to go. Sometimes, as on Nov. 30 near a place called Dripping Springs, they don’t.

Most of the time, they make great video. Enjoy.