Avalanche shoves truck off highway

Let us know what the weather (hopefully snow fall) is like in your area

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Avalanche shoves truck off highway

#1 Post by john »

Avalanche caution to all you riders:

The Associated Press

(Published: December 5, 2004)

FAIRBANKS -- A tanker truck driver escaped injury when an avalanche swept across the Parks Highway and pushed him off the road.

The avalanche off Panorama Mountain about 6 a.m. Friday hit the highway at Mile 217.5, north of Cantwell.

Department of Transportation spokeswoman Shannon McCarthy said the unidentified truck driver had just slowed to give a car kicking up snow more room when the avalanche swept across the road.

The driver said the avalanche came across the road and lifted him eight or nine feet off the road.

The avalanche was about 1,000 feet wide and eight feet deep, McCarthy said.

"It was a pretty significant slide," she said. "It wasn't just snow, there was a lot of trees and rocks in it too."

Things could have been much worse, McCarthy said.

"Luckily it happened early in the morning so there wasn't much traffic," she said.

By noon, DOT workers had cleared a hole to open one lane.

Freezing rain early in the week created a crust on top of snow, McCarthy said. A two-day snowstorm that dumped 1 to 2 feet of snow followed. The slide was likely a result of the fresh snow on top of an unstable snowpack, McCarthy said.

"We had all the right conditions for an avalanche," McCarthy said.

While falling rocks are a problem in the summer, nobody can remember an avalanche of that magnitude coming down on the Parks Highway since it was opened in 1971, said Howard Thies, director of maintenance and operations for the DOT's northern region.

"We call it a slide area but that's more for rocks than snow," Thies said. "We've never had a problem like that."

The DOT is bringing an avalanche expert in from Anchorage to inspect the area and assess additional avalanche danger, Thies said.

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