{"id":94491,"date":"2019-04-18T21:38:51","date_gmt":"2019-04-19T03:38:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/east-animas-road-reopens-after-almost-monthlong-closure\/"},"modified":"2019-04-18T21:38:51","modified_gmt":"2019-04-19T03:38:51","slug":"east-animas-road-reopens-after-almost-monthlong-closure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/east-animas-road-reopens-after-almost-monthlong-closure\/","title":{"rendered":"East Animas Road reopens after almost monthlong closure"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"John
John Petrucka with La Plata County Road and Bridge operates a front-end loader Wednesday to remove mud and debris that covered East Animas Road (County Road 250).<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

East Animas Road reopened Wednesday after county crews were able to clear the onslaught of mud and debris slides.<\/p>\n

The road (County Road 250) closed March 22 in the 2700 block<\/a>, which has a history of debris flows during spring runoff and heavy rains.<\/p>\n

Butch Knowlton, La Plata County\u2019s director of the Office of Emergency Management, said the mud and silt that spilled onto the road was too wet to haul away until now.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we put it in a dump truck, all that mud and silt would leak out over the road,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Knowlton estimated that 400 dump truck loads were required to open the northbound and southbound lanes.<\/p>\n

\"Butch
Butch Knowlton, La Plata County\u2019s director of Office of Emergency Management, said mud and debris slides this spring dumped the most amount of material on East Animas Road in recent memory. The road opened Wednesday after being closed for almost a month.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Knowlton said the recent mudslide contained the most material the county has ever hauled from East Animas Road, and the closure was the road\u2019s longest.<\/p>\n

While the threat of flooding from snowmelt is mostly gone, Knowlton said the risk of debris slides is not.<\/p>\n

This spring, snowmelt has moved massive amounts of material, and if the area gets heavy rainfall, more mud, rock and debris could come down.<\/p>\n

\"Roy
Roy Smith, left, and Robert Glasgow, both with La Plata County Road and Bridge, clear a culvert of mud Wednesday as crews prepare to open East Animas Road (County Road 250). Crews have been unable to haul debris because it has been too wet, county officials said.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

\u201cThousands of tons of material that slid down off the face of the rockslide is now parked at the toe end of the rockslide,\u201d he said. \u201cNow, there\u2019s a lot of material that could be readily mobilized by heavy rain.\u201d<\/p>\n

The original rockslide occurred July 5, 1998<\/a>, when a chunk of the upper hillside gave way, sending house-size boulders down Missionary Ridge. About 10 homes continue to be affected by runoff issues.<\/p>\n

Knowlton said emergency officials are monitoring the weather for incoming storms that might present flood danger.<\/p>\n

jromeo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

too wet to haul until this week<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":94492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[3834,557],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-94491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-emergency-management-director-butch-knowlton","tag-traffic"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94491"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=94491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}