By NanaimoNewsNOW Staff

Island Highway re-opens after washout

Nov 20, 2017 | 3:32 PM

OCEANSIDE — A major Vancouver Island highway is expected to re-open Monday evening after a serious washout.

Mike Pearson, district manager of transportation on Vancouver Island, said engineers were hard at work fixing the situation after Highway 19A north of Cook Creek Rd. was washed out at roughly 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 19. 

The eroded soil was removed and replaced with a safety fabric to re-enforce the road and provide some solid structure, before being filled once more with fresh soil and rock. 

“We’re confident the fix we’ve put in today, with the geo-technical fabric and the new material, will hold and we’ll be monitoring it very closely,” he said.

Pearson said though both the north and southbound lanes of the highway were closed, and photos from the scene looked quite serious, the road wasn’t in danger of collapsing. 

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He said washouts on major highways aren’t common, but are a fact of life when living on the Island. 

“It’s something we’ve seen before and something we’re prepared for. In this area, we saw 140 millimetres of rain over the last 24 hours, so you can expect with that much rain in a short amount of time some of our culverts can’t handle that.”

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