Washout closes main route between Flagstaff and Page
CAMERON — In the early morning hours Thursday, Murphy Huskie saw flashing red and blue lights in the distance as he neared Cameron. He was driving home, on the Navajo Reservation, from Flagstaff.
The lights flashed just beyond the Cameron Trading Post where he works. It was a dangerous, stormy night to drive on U.S. 89, but he safely turned off the highway to go home just before arriving at the worst of it.
Not far up the road, floodwaters had cut through the rock and soil beneath the highway, causing the pavement to cave in.
One person died in a crash. A semitruck had stopped short of falling in the gap where the highway collapsed, its
front wheels hanging over the edge of the pavement.
“It’s really sad,” said Merlin Carlson, one of Huskie’s co-workers at the Cameron Trading Post. “We had a major storm.”
In the storm’s aftermath, the region is reeling from the damage to this section of U.S. 89. Children can’t get to school. Employees can’t get to work. And the detour tacks on hours to tourists’ journeys.
“It’s a very important artery for this region,” said Doug Nintzel, a spokesman for the Arizona Department of Transportation.
Authorities have closed a section of U.S. 89 while construction crews repair the gap left by floodwaters. The southbound lanes are closed at the U.S. 89/ Highway 160 junction, and the northbound lanes are closed at Cameron, about 50 miles north of Flagstaff.
It’s difficult to predict when the crews will finish, Nintzel said. They began repairing the highway early Thursday morning. The highway is expected to remain closed for several days.
ADOT has outlined alternate routes. Motorists going to Page, Tuba City and other destinations north of Cameron can take Interstate 40 east from Flagstaff to State Route 87 at Winslow, then head north to State Route 264, northwest to U.S. 160 in Tuba City and west to U.S. 89.
Travelers going south can turn off U.S. 89 at State Route 264 and head east and south to Winslow, where they can enter I-40 back toward Flagstaff.
U.S. 89 connects communities on the western edge of the Navajo Reservation and carries tourists from Page and Lake Powell traveling toward Flagstaff and the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Access to the Canyon for motorists coming from Flagstaff is not affected.
Remnants of the storm still soaked the earth. Red mud and puddles stretched out from either side of the highway. The floodwaters had undercut the road’s surface beside two tunnels built to funnel water underneath the highway.
This time, there had been too much water to funnel.
It cut a gap in the highway about 20 feet wide, Nintzel said, adding that crews are working around the clock to fill it in and pave over it.
Meanwhile, employers and coworkers in Cameron scrambled Thursday to fill labor gaps left by employees stuck on the other side of the highway closure.
None of Reuben Mike’s employees in Tuba City could make it to work at the Navajo Trail Trading Post in Cameron.
And one of his employees in Cameron, Aurelia Webster, couldn’t send her 4- and 14-year-old boys to school in Tuba City on Thursday or Friday, she said.
Some travelers slept in their trucks and cars at the Navajo Trail Trading Post’s parking lot once the highway closed, Mike said. On Thursday, he noticed significantly less business passing through his stores.
At the nearby Cameron Trading Post, Carlson covered for co-workers in Tuba City who also couldn’t get to work on Thursday.
“Somebody’s got to,” he said. “Another day in life.”
Farther south in Gray Mountain, Julia and Sebastien Clement bought gas after taking a detour from Page that added about 21⁄2 hours and an extra tank of gas to their trip, Sebastien said.
They were traveling to the Grand Canyon from Page while on vacation from France.
“I think many tourists are in the same situation as us,” Julia said.