Check it Out: US 89 landslide blasting

Shovels and wheelbarrows just aren’t going to cut it when you need to move nearly one million cubic yards of dirt and rocks…

That’s why crews working to repair the landslide-damaged stretch of US 89 are using explosives.

As you can see in the video above, blasting is taking place above the slide. The excavated material will be trucked below to build a buttress (you can read our previous post for a more detailed look at the repair plan).

It probably goes without saying that these blasts were conducted by professionals, but we do want to mention that no one from our video team ventured near the site to get this footage. They were able to set up their trusty GoPro cameras well ahead of time and were not in the area during the blast.

If you’re interested in seeing how ADOT has used explosives on a different project, check out this post from 2011.