HIGHWAY 70 CLOSED AFTER ROCK SLIDES, SNOW BLOCKAGE
After months of natural disasters along Highway 70, Caltrans announced that the road would be closed indefinitely as crews work to unblock debris at multiple portions.
The announcement came Wednesday when Caltrans District 2 posted pictures of the damage to its Facebook page. Between rock breaks, landslides and an avalanche, months of work is expected to be conducted before single-lane traffic can come through.
Caltrans Public Information Officer Chris Woodward said the largest landslide occurred on Tuesday and is located at post mile 15.2 on the Plumas County side between Belden and Twain. It’s estimated that around 80,000 cubic yards of material came down.
“We’ve had a lot of activity there in the past couple of months,” Woodward said. “Starting back in early January with the atmospheric river events. Since then we’ve had probably half a dozen different areas with slides.”
On top of the landslides, the thick snow has created a barrier as well. An avalanche hit the roadway near the Opapee and Murphy creeks.
“It was a lot of snow filled with portions of trees, rocks and such,” Woodward said, adding that it is in the same general area as a slide that occurred in October 2022 that caused the initial closure. “It’s a very sheer rocky area. In late October, we had very large rocks come down, some the size of small commercial buses. So that’s been a very active area.”
Woodward said Caltrans is currently working toward having one-way traffic control but there is no estimated time of when that will be, and it will likely be much longer before thru traffic can occur again.
“We appreciate everyone’s patience,” Woodward said. “The closure has been underway for almost two months and Caltrans and our contractors have been working hard to clear the locations we can. We’re moving toward one-way traffic control.”
Woodward said much of the work will be to assess the areas to ensure it’s safe before allowing any sort of traffic going forward.
“The fracturing at the post mile 15.2 slide we’ve been noting for some time,” Woodward said. “It’s hard to get equipment on it to try and get work done on it. You have to be really careful when working with such a large amount of material on the highway where it’s unstable.”
The slides have made it difficult for some who live on either side of Highway 70. Oroville resident Joey Bivins said she hasn’t been able to see her daughter, son-in-law and grandchildren in Quincy since the closure.
“We have had to go months without seeing them,” Bivins said. “We’ve also missed family events and birthdays. I’m wishing they never moved to Quincy. I think this is the third slide since the kids moved. All very recently it seems.”
Additional travel information can be found at QuickMap.dot.ca.gov.