The stunning images of the California Highway 1 collapse: “It fell into the sea”

The rains that devastated California over the past week collapsed a significant mountainous stretch of Highway 1 near Rat Creek, about 25 miles from Big Sur, between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) officials explained that a stream of debris ran down the slope and hit the drain, which could not withstand the great amount of water, mud and other elements, which broke the road.

The first warning was issued by a California Highway Patrol officer, John Yerace, who shared how he realized last Thursday afternoon that ‘That part of the road, especially the southbound carriageway, had fallen into the ocean’, in statements reproduced by CNN.

Since then efforts to reconstruct the sector have begun, but the drone footage of the scene shows a huge gap and it is not known how long the road repair will take in a sector of tremendous panoramic beauty that runs through much of the California coast.

When the Caltrans crews learned of the effects of the landslide, they awarded an emergency contract to Papich Construction in San Luis Obispo County to begin repairs. Crews arrived on the scene Friday morning to discover that “both lanes of the highway had disappeared”.

Officer Yerace added that when he discovered the collapse, he stayed on site to protect motorists. He later returned to the workers of Caltrans to check the total collapse that had occurred: “At some point in the night, before 6:30 am, with the help of Caltrans, we arrived at the scene and realized that the road had disappeared. , “he said.

The landslide area is about a mile south of the mark left by the Dolan fire, one of the forest disasters that devastated the state last summer.

This is not the first time such a disaster has occurred on Highway 1. Another section was reopened in July 2018, more than a year after a massive landslide devastated it in May 2017. At that point the road had not disappeared, but tons of stones had been piled along a section where it was not possible to travel. The coast grew by more than 50 thousand square meters.

The Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has declared a state of emergency for the counties of Monterey and San Luis Obispo due to winter storms and subsequent landslides of mud and debris, which led to the evacuation of thousands of residents.

It is estimated that no fewer than 25 buildings in Northern California have been damaged by this phenomenon, coincidentally in areas where previous wildfires have also caused damage.

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