Highway 4 between Kennedy Lake and the Ucluelet Junction has re-opened to single lane, alternating traffic after a sinkhole forced the road's closure on Friday.
The highway collapsed Friday night. Nobody was injured, but the sinkhole forced closure of the highway Friday. Construction crew from Emcon Services Inc. were on site when the road got washed away, and 16 crew members spent all day Saturday clearing a detour around the collapsed roadway.
“The road has been failing for a week. We were concerned last week. We were waiting for a geotechnical engineer to give us some guidance. We had two months of rain and the clay and the road base here couldn't take it anymore. It got saturated and couldn't hold itself together,” said Emcon services manager Oliver Watson.
Updates on the sinkhole can be found on www.drivebc.ca and on Emcon's Facebook page (www.facebook.com/emconservicesinc), or emconservices.ca. Please note that due to the snow on Monday, the DriveBC site was operating slowly if at all.
(With information from Nora O'Malley, Westerly News)