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District 2 crews earn Excellence award
in Maintenance & Operations
for spring slide cleanup

The clean-up effort this past spring by District 2 in the aftermath of significant slides won the Excellence in Transportation Award in December. The cleanup involved 1,800 personnel hours over a span of five days, and required every shed in the district to pitch in — especially the Orofino, Grangeville and Lewiston crews. This was an average of more than 350 personnel hours per day!

In the spring of 2019, slopes saturated by rain caused tons of mud, rock and trees to onto US-12. Two years earlier, fire had burned off the vegetation that normally would anchor those soils.

It started on April 8, as consistent, heavy rain began to bring materials down the slope from the old burned-out area. Trees, rocks and mud had reached the highway. Orofino Maintenance Foreman Blake Thompson and crew got to work cleaning it up so traffic could get through. The highway was blocked for a short duration, but then cleared and reopened.

The following morning (April 9) at 1:45, Thompson received a call at home — another, larger slide had completely covered the road at milepost 62. The Orofino crew got back to work clearing this new slide. During this same time, ID-162 and ID-13 were both closed as well due to slides, and high water in the streams washed out sections of the shoulders along these highways.

The Craigmont crew started clearing out the slides on ID-162, which was critical because they needed it to be reopened so it could be used by traffic to route around Thompson’s slides for traffic. Craigmont Foreman Lee Linabury and his crew got the road open later that day, so they had a route around to Kamiah and Kooskia.

Then, the following day (April 10), yet another drainage broke free. This one was larger and more forceful, and this time the material washed across US-12 at milepost 63 and pushed approximately 110 feet of concrete rail into the river. Thompson had 14 dump trucks from all over District 2 hauling mud from the slides, along with two loaders, and numerous excavators being moved to different locations to help with the cleanup. About 10 areas between Greer and Kamiah had been blocked or had water on the roadway. Parts of nearby towns were also underwater.

The cleanup continued, and on Friday (April 12) slide areas continued to be monitored for any movement. Confident that the area had stopped sliding, D2 crews reopened the road to traffic Saturday morning (April 13). Shortly thereafter, a new slide came down in a different section of US-12. This one, at milepost 89 near Syringa, was in Mark Schuster’s foreman area. Heavy rains had saturated the ground, bringing rocks and mud down onto the highway, along with about 25 trees.

Crews mounted another assault and continued clearing the road for traffic and restoring drainage.

In all, US-12 was closed for five days. Cleanup costs amounted to $100,500. The closures prompted emergency actions by the Red Cross, the Nez Perce Tribe and Idaho and Lewis counties. Idaho Gov. Brad Little issued a disaster declaration for Idaho County in the aftermath of these floods.

The maintenance foreman of District 2 were integral to a successful response to a hazardous and serious emergency. Operations employees from the entire district worked together tirelessly to clean up these road sections and get them back into service in a short amount of time. The district even pulled in additional personnel from engineering and ETS to handle the crisis.

The district handled the slides, which is no surprise. After all, these guys took care of the Elk City slide a few years ago. Most gratifying, though, was that they did it with zero injuries or lost-time incidents.

Here's the story on the cleanup from last spring.

Here's the link to the video with Lee at the award ceremony.