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Text transcript of the video "Winter
storm damage "
 Watch
this video clip (Real Media) Length: 6:07
Watch this video clip (Windows Media) Length:
6:07
Narrator says:
The wet winter storms that soaked King County in January and February
kept the County Road Services Division busy.
In some cases, such as here at Issaquah Hobart Road where Issaquah Creek
undercut the roadway, crews worked non-stop through the storm to rebuild
both the creek bank and the roadway to get it open again. But in many
cases, crews were forced to make temporary fixes to stabilize the roads,
and now that we’re drying out a bit, they’re working on to how to make
more permanent fixes. And according to Road Services Division Manager
Linda Dougherty, it’s more than just road surfaces that need to be
considered.
Linda Dougherty/KC Road Services Manager says:
Some of these repairs are going to be fairly costly because we’ve
actually experienced an entire hillside shifting, not just the road
sliding down the hillside or the embankment sliding down onto the road,
so what that means is we’re going to have to do what’s called
dewatering, aquifers that often times have very little water in them are
totally recharged, so we’re having continuous runoff in areas and that
takes its toll on the whole crust that’s on top of the hillsides around
here. And then other areas are located on what we call glacial till,
which is pretty much sand and gravel and so those are the kinds of
things where we have landslides coming down on roads and roads sliding
down the hill and it’s because there’s so much water that its actually
washing all the fine materials out of those soils and causing the rocks
and the sands to just sort of act like a bunch of ball bearings and just
kind of let loose…so both those scenarios and they require a little bit
different approach but the projects require that you dewater the
hillside in many cases, so it’s not just rebuilding the road, it’s
actually doing some engineering related to hydrolics.
Narrator says:
Some of the damage and repairs don’t have anything to do with hillsides,
they are related to seawalls, such as on Vashon Island.
Linda Dougherty/KC Road Services Manager says:
Certainly on Vashon Island we have a couple of major roadways
that depend on the sturdiness of seawalls and so those, as a result of
both the high winds and the extraordinary high tides we’ve had a couple
of times this winter have suffered some damage and so we’ve done interim
repairs but those will have to be more permanently repaired at the
specific spots of failure before we go into the next winter season.
Narrator says:
How quickly King County can make some of these repairs comes down to how
much money is available and where additional funding can be found.
Linda Dougherty/KC Road Services Manager says:
The good news is that in a normal year we actually do have a
little storm reserve that we program into our roads maintenance budget
because in any given year with our wet challenges that we have in our
northwest winters, we do have some roads that periodically wash out, so
that budget is about 300-thousand dollars, which unfortunately is merely
a pebble in the pile of stones we’ve got going this year. We actually to
date, and things are still changing, have about $2.8 million worth of
just emergency storm response costs we have incurred, that doesn’t
include the permanent repairs, that’s just interim repairs to stabilize
the road where we could. And is some cases part of it is a watch and
wait situation and right now with those many slides have occurred and as
you mentioned staff have been identifying what it would take to actually
fix those roads properly for the long term it looks like we’re probably
in the $4.5 to $5 million range right now and of course it’s not done
yet, it’s not going to be over until we’re into June.
Narrator says:
So the county is identifying trouble spots, prioritizing what needs to
be done and keeping track of the money already spent, with the hope of
getting some of it back from the federal government.
Linda Dougherty/KC Road Services Manager says:
There is a possibility of getting some Federal Highway
Administration assistance with some of the permanent repairs. So we’re
keeping very careful track of all of our expenses at each of the
specific locations, each of the things that are going on with a
particular section of roadway so we can track all those costs. And we
won’t know until probably later this year how much of those costs will
be covered by the Federal Highway Administration and then in addition
we’ll be looking at which of these projects can actually be delayed for
reconstruction until the following year so they can become part of our
annual budget process. And then of course unfortunately we often have
problems that need to be solved soon like before next years storm season
which begins in Oct-Nov and for those we’re probably going to be going
to the council in May or June seeking to reprogram some capitol
improvement project money into funding these more immediate repairs, the
ones that can’t be delayed until our regular budget cycle.
Narrator says:
In the meantime, roads crews are on the job, whatever the weather,
doing their best with whatever the weather throws at them.
Linda Dougherty/KC Road Services Manager says:
People have been sending emails and phone calls and that really is
nice for our crews to hear because it is difficult, they’re out working
24 hours a day, 12 hour shifts in weather that many people would not be
out walking their dog in and doing their jobs in pretty dangerous
conditions, so I do appreciate that very much.
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