Check out this giant boulder get blown up so that Colorado can have their highway back.
Last Friday, Colorado suffered a rockslide. That’s not particularly unusual in the mountains of Colorado, but what was unusual was the size of a few boulders. One boulder was so enormous it blocked state Highway 145 roughly 12 miles north of the town of Dolores.
Running 48-feet long, 18-feet high, and weighing roughly 2.3 million pounds, the giant rock carved a trench in the road before finally coming to a stop, its girth completely blocking all passage and forcing the highway to close.
The Colorado Department Of Transportation was called in to assess the situation and confirmed that yes, a giant rock had indeed wrecked the highway and come to rest smack-dab in the middle. They had to call in a geotechnical team "to clean and clear loose rock that has been found on the face of the ridge,” according to the CDOT Facebook post, and also see what could be done about the boulder.
What was eventually decided upon was to remove the boulder using explosives. At 2.3 million pounds, the boulder was way too big to move with through conventional means, so explosives were dropped inside the boulder via drilled holes. You can see the detonation below.
Ground crews came in to start removing the smaller pieces after it had been blown to smithereens. Cleanup crews have so far managed to repair the highway and remove enough debris to reopen a single lane, but far more repairs are needed before the entire highway is reopened.
An even larger boulder fell some distance away and is estimated to be 50 feet tall and 50 feet wide and weighing upwards of 8.5 million lbs. That boulder also tore a path through the highway, but at least came to rest some distance away. CDOT says that boulder will stay where it is and won’t be blown up, sadly.
(via Motor1)