Hundreds of vehicles were backed up in both directions all day Thursday (Feb. 22) after a rock blast at Shannon Falls went awry.At approximately 5 a.m., highway construction crews for Peter Kiewit and Sons set off a controlled blast above Highway 99 near the Shannon Falls parking lot.
The blast dislodged a boulder the size of a car, which landed onto the highway and damaged it beyond road safety standards for travel.No one from the public was involved in the incident since traffic control operators had stopped vehicles at a safe distance in both directions before the blasting took place.
"That happens and that's exactly why they do scheduled blasts and close the road when they do that," said Ministry of Transportation public affairs officer Susan Williams.
There were no injuries reported from construction crew personnel.
Kiewit crews scrambled to remove the rock and fix the damage while the highway section was narrowed to one single lane for the entire day.Southbound traffic was backed up a far as the Cleveland Ave. intersection and northbound traffic backed up to Britannia Beach, according to report.
Travelers also reported that the slow pace of movement through the portion of the corridor caused by the single alternating vehicle traffic left drivers crawling for more than half an hour along the approximately 13 kilometres between Squamish and Britannia Beach.
It's the fourth time in two years a scheduled rock blast closed the road unexpectedly, according to Sea to Sky Improvement community relations officer Pam Tattersfield, who added that the project did not consider the Ansell Place rock slide that occurred Feb. 4 as a rock blast-related incident.
Williams said the blasting is not only done safely, it is done for safety reasons.
"Safety is the reason we do the blasting," she said. "With that kind of terrain, every year with the freezing and thawing, it makes the slope unstable. So we have geotechnical experts that, if anything looks unstable, they'll go in and do a controlled blast."
