Big Slip On Inland Route

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30811, 24 July 1965, Page 1

Big Slip On Inland Route

Amuri county workmen are having difficulty in stabilising a 600 ft three-chain wide slip on the inland route from Kaikoura to Waiau. The slip lies about one male north of the Whale’s Back. The Amuri county overseer (Mr H. C. Croft) said last night that the condition of the road was “very bad.”

The slip covers about 10 acres, and the road runs through the middle of it. The whole side of the hill was on the move from about 150 ft above where the road tine was originally down to the creek, about 250 ft below the road line, said Mr Croft. About a month ago the slip began to move about an inch an hour, but in the last week the rate was three feet overnight. - Telephone poles and a fence which were on the road edge were now three

chains down the hill, where the <rid road surface now lay. The council, with a team of seven trucks, a grader and a front end loader, had been cutting into the slip face and laying shingle in an attempt to keep the road open, said Mr Croft. For the last three weeks trucks had carried 250 yards of shingle daily from a site three miles away. Though the road was now closed from 4 “pm. till 9 a.m. daily the position previously had been dangerous as a car

caught on the slip face when it suddenly moved could have been swept away. Ministry of Works engineers again inspected the slip yesterday and it was expected that a bulldozer would be sent to the area next week to cut away the slip back to the rock foundation, said Mr Croft. “We were just keeping up with it in those first three weeks but with six inches of snow melting the slip moved faster,” said Mr Croft. “It was getting out of band and beating us.”