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Motorists on the Kenai Spur Highway on Thursday pass hubcaps left behind following a spell of potholes caused by rainy weather earlier this week.
Photo by M Scott Moon
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Beat up and broken down from rain and freezing, area highways received some special attention from state road crews who put in extra hours this week.
Carl High, Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities district superintendent, said Monday that if there was rain falling on ice and slush, it could bring out the potholes.
And as drivers have seen, it did.
Dozens of drivers reported some sort of automobile damage from the potholes. Craig Wortham, tire operations manager at Alyeska, said the repair shop experienced a steep incline in customers.
"Business was pretty intense Tuesday. I counted six cars and three tow trucks while driving on Kenai Spur Highway, so I knew we were going to be busy," Wortham said. "In the past couple of days, we've had four times the amount business we normally have.
"If you impact those potholes at any sort of speed, it would do some damage. The worst we've had is two blown front tires and bent rims, and to replace everything ran $1,300."
Wortham said the roads have been bad all season, but this week brought out the worst.
"I have lived here 25 years, and this is the worst I can remember the roads ever being," he said. "Tuesday I drove from Kenai to Soldotna and saw potholes three to four feet in diameter. They were totally unavoidable. It's a lot better now that the road crews got a lot of it cleared up, so it has quieted down a lot for us since then."
Towing companies felt the surge in clientele, as well.
Karen Lacy of Ace Automotive said she knew of 14 cars that were towed in with flat tires and bent rims from the Spur Highway during the worst part of weather at the beginning of the week.
"It looked like a war zone out there — potholes everywhere. I saw three road crews working all at once," Lacy said.
Arunee Rhoades, Soldotna Towing owner and tow truck driver, said it's unusual to tow seven different cars on the same highway with the same problems — busted tires and busted rims.
"Whatever they did Tuesday night wasn't working," he said. "They (road crews) were out there patching while it was raining, and by morning, some potholes were back again."
Indeed, the road crews were out working while it was raining. Some workers were out patching the Spur Highway all night.
Wednesday, High said after 36 straight hours of patching, highway crews were just getting caught up on filling the potholes.
"Some of them were so big we had to pre-fill with D-1 (a graded sand and gravel mixture) before putting down the hardened cold mix on top. The biggest holes were three feet wide and approaching 10 or 12 feet long," he said.
Brian Gabriel, DOT roads foreman, estimates the agency used roughly two tons of the D-1 mixture and 20 to 25 tons of cold mix.
"Ninety percent of the patching we do happens on the Spur and between Bridge Access Road and Robinson Grocery on K-Beach. Our efforts on potholes is to hit the hot spots first to stay ahead of the curve," Gabriel said.
Potholes occur when there is no place for water to go, and instead it gets trapped in a road's rut. Gabriel said the Spur Highway is an older road with a thinning top and obvious ruts.
"When we were doing the potholing, we could see the asphalt is not as thick as it should be. The depressions in the roads are not in the underlying base, they are on the top," he said.
High and Gabriel said the staff was stretched fairly thin, and work like this week's doesn't come around often.
"We've had our problems with the weather, but nothing like this," Gabriel said.
Passing traffic was an added problem to repairing efforts Tuesday night. The Kenai Police Department reported a traffic hazard due to multiple vehicles with damage, and assisted road crews because automobiles were not slowing or yielding.
"Just the presence of the KPD made a tremendous help in letting us work," High said.
