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  1. #1
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    In Nevada, washed-out interstate is truckers' nightmare

    In Nevada, washed-out interstate is truckers' nightmare

    A bulldozer works on a flood-ravaged portion of Interstate 15 near Moapa, Nev. Officials had hoped to reopen one lane in each direction on the interstate by Friday night, but that will do little to alleviate the hours-long detours faced by truckers. (John Locher / Associated Press)



    By JOHN M. GLIONNAcontact the reporter

    '100-year storm' wreaks havoc for truckers driving through Nevada

    Prepare for long wait if driving north of Las Vegas on I-15 due to storm


    Nevada storm bad news for everyone along Interstate 15 — except motel owners



    Mother Nature works in confounding ways: snow flurries in Phoenix, a balmy Christmas in Buffalo, and this week's catastrophic flood in the normally parched desert 50 miles north of this resort city.

    In what some term the area's worst storm in decades, a 2-mile-long stretch of Interstate 15 in rural Moapa was destroyed by 4 inches of rain that lashed the roadway in just an hour on Monday.

    The dying throes of Tropical Storm Norbert dumped as much rain on the area in 60 minutes as Las Vegas gets in a year.


    The mother of all road detours has come for thousands of vacationers, sightseers and long-distance truckers, including delays of eight hours or more, with vehicles diverted onto a gantlet of winding two-lane roads that squiggle into the cacti and scrub brush.

    Interactive
    I-15 in Nevada closed due to flooding Doug Stevens


    The roundabout has resulted in millions of dollars in losses for regional trucking companies and their customers. Drivers on already tight schedules — and with legal limits on how long they can spend on the road — have thrown up their hands.

    "The worst backup I've seen in 25 years as a long-distance trucker," said Ken Leth, 58, a driver for Las Vegas-based Truline Corp. trucking company who says he has clocked 3 million road miles. "You couldn't get up and running. It was 20 miles an hour most of the way."


    For customers, waits of up to 36 hours for deliveries have meant that hospitals have run out of clean linens for patients and rural gas stations have run out of fuel.


    "It's been tough," said Paul Enos, chief executive of the Nevada Trucking Assn., which represents 530 companies. "Some people are getting desperate."

    lRelated
    NATION NOWFlooding forces 50 miles of I-15 to be closed north of Las Vegas SEE ALL RELATED

    In Nevada, 94% of all manufactured goods are delivered by truck — versus 69% nationally, he said. Much of that cargo travels along I-15, a commercial artery that in the damaged area handles 25,500 vehicles per day.

    "We've been trying to get hours-of-service exemption so guys can wait out the delays and stay on the road," he said. "There are just so many towns out there that depend on trucks."


    Since the storm hit, I-15 has been closed in both directions, and state transportation crews have worked around the clock to repair the damage. Officials planned to open one lane in either direction by late Friday, but even if that happens, traffic will be restricted to cars and light trucks.


    That means for at least another week, 18-wheelers will have to continue on a circuitous route through two states.


    Oh my gosh, that first day was just a nightmare, with bumper-to-bumper cars and trucks. At one point it took two hours to get five miles.- Nolan Avery, owner of the Shady Hotel in Caliente


    Leth and others consulted their trucker's atlas for this time-killer: His northbound semi was waved off I-15 onto U.S. Highway 93, through tiny Alamo and Caliente to the town of Panaca. Then he headed east on State Route 319, which becomes Utah Route 56, and connected back onto I-15 in Cedar City, Utah.

    That's 225 miles on narrow two-lane roads, versus 150 miles on the interstate.


    For Leth, who was hauling dairy products to Denver, the detour took more than eight hours to cover ground that would have taken three hours on I-15: "I was a captive audience — all I could do is sit in traffic."


    For a time, all traffic was diverted onto this route. Now cars and trucks travel east from the interstate through Valley of Fire State Park — with highly reduced speed limits — and back on the highway 40 miles and several traffic-congested hours later, just 18 miles from where they started.


    From his check-in desk, Nolan Avery, owner of the 40-room Shady Hotel in Caliente, has watched the slow-moving Nevada version of "Carmageddon."


    "Oh my gosh, that first day was just a nightmare, with bumper-to-bumper cars and trucks. At one point it took two hours to get five miles," he said. "People were irate, just stuck in their vehicles. Trucks broke down, which made things worse."

    The last few days have gotten better, Avery said. "Now it's nothing but trucks. One rumbles past here just about every 10 seconds."


    Frustrated motorists have veered off the detour route — including the tour bus operator who abandoned a trip to Zion National Park in southern Utah for one to nearby Death Valley. His reason: You just couldn't get there from here, not in any timely way.


    "We're getting lots of tour buses in here," said Vivien Rudzena, manager of the Horizon Market in Parumph. "The line to our bathroom goes around the corner. I tell people to drink plenty of water. It's a desert out there."


    Some are calling this week's downpour southern Nevada's 100-year storm, but transportation officials say that's an understatement.

    "Our system is equipped to handle those 'worst-in-100-years' storms, but this was much worse than that," said Mario Gomez, an assistant engineer with the Nevada Department of Transportation.


    He said the drainage system, designed to handle a river of water 200 feet wide and 20 feet deep, overflowed, sending 2 feet of water onto the roadway, toppling cars and ripping up the roadway. "The sheer force of the water scours the road. It rips and tears everything in its path."


    Gomez arrived at the gutted stretch of highway to see sheer devastation. "The road was just gone in places," he said. "I've never seen as severe a force of nature in my life, and I've got a new respect."


    Enos said truckers were preparing for the long and hard road ahead.

    Drivers were teaming up to outlast the delays and some were avoiding Nevada entirely. Still, the delays are taking their toll.


    "You figure that it costs about $80 an hour to run a long-distance truck, with salary and fuel," he said. "So you get long delays like this and multiply the losses by tens of thousands of trucks, and the losses start to add up real fast."


    Gomez said the big trucks would be kept off the interstate until all four lanes reopen because there are several hilly stretches that would cause long lines behind lumbering 18-wheelers in low gear.


    "We know I-15 is a commercial lifeline to Utah, California and the rest of the country," he said. "So it's extremely important to get things open as soon as possible. I feel horrible for those truckers. But we're working as fast as we can."


    But where there is economic famine there is also feast. Shady Motel owner Avery says business has been good. "For a small town like ours, something like this is a financial boost, if only for a few short weeks."

    http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-highway-washout-20140912-story.html
    Last edited by JohnDoe2; 09-13-2014 at 04:24 PM.
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  2. #2
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    It is open to car traffic, but not for Trucks yet they have to go around on the 93 and by pass 15.
    video at link below




    Flood-damaged I-15 reopens north of Vegas

    Interstate 15 north of Las Vegas reopened at 4 p.m. Friday with one lane each direction, Nevada transportation officials said.


    Stories, maps:

    More information on the Interstate 15 story as it develops.


    By BEN BOTKIN
    LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

    Interstate 15 north of Las Vegas reopened at 4 p.m. Friday with one lane in each direction, Nevada transportation officials said.
    Flooding closed part of the normally busy highway Monday.

    A two-mile stretch along the median of I-15 swelled with floodwater Monday, destroying parts of the north- and southbound lanes about 50 miles northeast of Las Vegas. The hardest hit area was between Moapa and Glendale, where about 4 inches of rain fell in a two-hour period.
    Road crews started working around the clock Tuesday to reopen the road. Las Vegas Paving crews removed flood debris and rebuilt the base of the highway damaged from the flood, the Nevada Department of Transportation said.

    Crews started the paving work on Thursday night.

    “Our top priority is the mobility and safety of motorists,” Transportation Department Director Rudy Malfabon said in a statement. “Rebuilding and repaving two miles of interstate in just four days has been nothing short of amazing.”

    Traffic in both directions will be re-routed onto the northbound interstate while crews make repairs on the southbound side of the highway. The southbound side is expected to open Sept. 22.

    It’s a different dynamic for commercial big-rig trucks.

    Big rigs heading north from Las Vegas between 5 a.m. and 10 p.m. will need to take a detour on U.S Highway 93. The detour is north through Alamo and Caliente to state Route 319 through Panaca, then Utah Route 56 to hook up to 1-15 at Cedar City. Travel on the interstate by northbound big rig trucks is allowed between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m.

    Southbound big-rig trucks can take the interstate without needing a detour.

    The speed limit on the interstate is 55 mph in the impacted areas.
    Last edited by kathyet2; 09-13-2014 at 12:11 PM.

  3. #3
    Senior Member JohnDoe2's Avatar
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    Posted September 18, 2014 - 11:24am Updated September 18, 2014 - 12:14pm

    I-15 near Moapa reopens in both directions

    Road crews work to repair Interstate 15 in Moapa on Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2014. Record flooding on Monday caused major highway damage. (Photo by David Becker/Las Vegas Review-Journal)


    Stories, maps:

    More information on the Interstate 15 story as it develops.


    LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

    Interstate 15 near Moapa has been reopened in both directions and restrictions requiring trucks to detour more than 60 miles out of their way have been lifted.


    The Nevada Transportation Department on Thursday opened the southbound side of the highway four days ahead of schedule. The highway currently is configured with one southbound lane and two northbound lanes to allow easier truck passage at a steep incline south of the area that had been closed.


    Department officials said restrictions on commercial vehicles have been lifted but oversized loads are required to obtain permits prior to using the route.


    A flash flood producing rainstorm near Moapa on Sept. 8
    dumped 4 inches of rain in two hours. The median between the highway lanes filled with water, eroding the road base and gouging a gap up to 20 feet deep that destroyed both sides of the highway about 50 miles northeast of Las Vegas.


    Department maintenance crews from offices in Las Vegas, Ely, Alamo and Panaca and contractor Las Vegas Paving began working to rebuild the highway the next day. Las Vegas Paving placed nearly 50,000 cubic yards of earthwork — about 2,500 dump truck loads of dirt — to shore up the base before repaving the surface. One lane in each direction opened on the northbound side four days after the flood.


    Las Vegas Paving transported materials from quarries at Apex.

    About 25,000 vehicles, including hundreds of commercial operators, use that stretch of I-15 every day.

    Crews worked around the clock to complete the work.


    Because the department was in the midst of a 26-mile highway overhaul when the flood occurred, it issued a multimillion-dollar change order on the project to expedite work.


    “Our top priority continues to be the mobility and safety of motorists,” Department Director Rudy Malfabon said. “Rebuilding and repaving the interstate so quickly and proficiently is nothing short of amazing and we thank Las Vegas Paving for their work.”


    Malfabon also credited the Nevada Trucking Association and the Nevada Department of Public Safety for their coordination.

    http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/ne...oth-directions

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