By QUINTON SMITH/YachatsNews.com
Three massive tow trucks and crews from across the country hauled a 28-ton drilling rig from the edge of the ocean Saturday, three weeks after it fell to the rocks 150 feet below U.S. Highway 101.
Go here to see a drone video of the removal that the Oregon Department of Transportation posted Thursday.
The collapse of the road at Brays Point six miles south of Yachats on Feb. 5 led to full and partial closures of the only highway between Yachats and Florence, which sees up to 5,000 vehicles a day.
The drill was hauled away and other equipment moved Saturday evening and the highway reopened at 7 p.m. It is now open around the clock — with flaggers at the one-lane section — for several weeks while road repairs are completed.
The road collapse, repair and equipment removal had drawn attention not only for the inconvenience of daily commuters and travelers, but how the drill’s operator survived with only bumps and bruises.
“This was very unusual and very unexpected,” said Angela Beers Seydel, a spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Transportation who watched the retrieval Saturday. “We work in places with inherent risks and we try to mitigate them … but no one expected this.”
The issue was a small section of a 95-year-old wall holding up the edge of the highway at Brays Point, just south of Bob Creek. It was discovered failing in January, and GeoStabilization International of Colorado brought to reinforce it by inserting long screws and concrete.
But as drilling equipment and its operator were working Feb. 5, the wall collapsed and sent the drill and Austin Miller, 28, of Spencer, Iowa, to the rocks below. Miller was taken to Peace Harbor Medical Center in Florence, treated for injuries and released a day later.
For the past three weeks, GeoStabilization crews have been inserting more long screws and concrete to build a new wall and then rebuild the westernmost lane of the highway.
Once that was far enough along, the contractor needed to get the drill rig off the rocks below.
It brought in three massive wreckers from Mast Brothers Towing of Reedsport and a team of rappelers from Seattle to attach cables to the drill and slowly haul it up the cliff.
Starting at 7 a.m. Saturday, the crews pulled the drill up a few feet, reset the cables and moved it another few feet. Over and over again – all overseen by an observer perched over the edge of the cliff in a cherry picker.
The drill was just below the highway at noon Saturday, then reached flat ground at 12:30 p.m.
Beers Seydel praised the crews for pulling off the retrieval operation without an issue.
“This is their expertise,” she said of Mast Brothers Towing. “And there were people from all over the country … happy to do this and do it safely.”
The repair work – now including retrieval – is expected to cost $400,000 to $450,000.
As for Miller?
He’s expecting to return to work in a few weeks, said Beers Seydel.
