ODOT reopens Highway 58 between Lowell and Oakridge

EUGENE, Ore. — Highway 58 between Lowell and Oakridge reopened just before 6 p.m. Tuesday. The highway had been closed since 4:30 p.m. Sunday due to landslides.

Traffic will be limited to one lane where crews are still clearing slide debris, said Oregon Department of Transportation spokeswoman Angela Beers Seydel. Road workers are also still cleaning up storm damaged tree west and east of Oakridge.

“It’s open, but there are a lot of work zones out there so people should expect delays,” she said. “Hopefully, we’ll get it all cleaned up soon.”

Removing the landslides has become an even bigger task than initially thought. The largest of the slides, at milepost 27, consisted of about 4,000 cubic yards of earth, rocks and trees, she said. The estimate Tuesday was four times larger than the estimate of 1,000 cubic yards given by ODOT on Monday. She said the increase was due to workers having a closer look at the landslide, and more material sliding down onto the highway.

Highway 58, linking Oakridge with the Willamette Valley, has been closed since Sunday when the first slope gave way during heavy rain.

Two other slides, one at milepost 14 and another at milepost 28, had about 1,000 cubic yards of debris. A typical dump truck hauls about 10 cubic yards of material, so the largest slide is enough to fill 400 dump trucks and the smaller slides are enough to fill 100 dump trucks.

Fully clearing the highway, and mending mangled guardrails, will take days, Beers Seydel said. “Once the road is open there will still be work zones,” she said, so traffic will likely still experience some delays.

For updated highway conditions go to tripcheck.com.