Rockslide Closes Down Lane

MoDOT crews are cleaning up the remnants of a rock slide along highway 63 in southern Boone County from Friday. They tell ABC 17 News the bluff crumbled and went spilling onto the shoulder and even into the driving lane. Crews expect to be cleaning up into Tuesday.This might not be the last time they have a clean up a rock slide. They say the snow melt along with the rains creates a perfect situation for bluffs to give way. That is putting MoDOT officials on high alert. That’s because drops of water like these aren’t just dripping down the face of the rock, it’s inside the rock.”Over the winter you have the freezing and thawing, and when we get some spring rains, there’s chances of this happening,” MoDOT maintenance superintendent Jim Williams says. “It’s a natural occurrence, where rock comes off the sides of the cliffs and it’s just something we have to maintain.”This isn’t the first time this has happened. Less than a mile from this location three years ago the same thing happened. MoDOT crews tell us that rockslide and this most recent one were both due to the same thing.MoDOT crews tell us they’re always keeping an eye on the bluffs. They say with the current conditions, a collapse could happen at any time. They’re inspecting the bluffs often. Crews even came by within the last few months and cleaned up small rocks that had fallen throughout the winter. But even after doing all of that they didn’t find anything that would set off red flags, and the bluff still crumbled.”It is a natural occurrence and it’s hard to predict, you don’t know where it’s going to happen so I mean we try to keep an eye on places that look like there might be a spot that comes loose and we try to get the rock down,” Williams says.Crews tell us they have looked at all of the bluffs in the area and haven’t seen anything alarming. But they can’t predict it and it’s not out of the question that another rockslide could happen. Crews say rock slides like this happen all around the state.