HIGHWAY REPAIRS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19700, 4 August 1938, Page 6

HIGHWAY REPAIRS

TOLL OF THE WINTER EXCEPTIONAL RAINFALL YEARS OF WORK AHEAD POWER UNITS’ VALUE “Given a few weeks ot dry weather, the Public Works Department and the various county organisations will restore communications to something like normal, st> far as the comfort and efficiency of road services are concerned. It will take years of work, however, before we can Overcome completely the adverse effects of this winter’s exceptional rainfall,” stated Mr. O. G. Thornton, district engineer, discussing with a pressman to-day the difficulties under which road traffic facilities have been maintained during recent weeks. “If the general public could be made aware of the magnificent efforts put forward by officers of the department and of the county councils, and by the men actually engaged in clearing slips and relieving traffic blocks of various kinds, it would open its eyes,” added Mr. Thornton, who instanced. various phases of the protracted struggle to keep traffic moving as well as to cope with recurring slips, wash-outs, and losses of bridges. More Traffic Development The past 10 years, he pointed Out, had brought an extraordinary development of motor traffic in the district, and had created also many demands which could not be satisfied if road communications were suspended for more than a day or two at the most. At the time of his appointment as district engineer at Gisborne, he recalled, there had been no regular winter traffic by the northern route, which was then under reconstruction between Puha and Motuhbra, the old Motu road being the only practicable route from Matawai to Opotiki, Similarly, the East Coast road had been subject to frequent blockages owing to wet weather, and the top end of the Coast was cut off for a great part of each winter. Even the southern connection was intermittent, during the worst of the winter. Substantial expenditure of State and county funds since that time had given the public cause to regard allweather road communication as its right, and every effort on the part of the authorities had been made to fulfil public expectations. In such a season as this had been, however, it was inevitable that traffic could be kept on the move only by concentrating on superficial. repairs and clearances. The winter would leave a legacy of deep-seated troubles which must take years of endeavour on the part of the roading- authorities. Value of Mechanical Aids “There is nothing more certain than that the highways of the district would have remained closed until the spring, but for the employment of mechanical aids In shifting slips and repairing, wash-outs,” Mr. Thornton stated. “Many of these jobs simply coulfl not have been handled by the older methods associated, with manual employment while the rain persisted. “There are sections of the East Coast road, for instance, where silt covered the highway to a depth of several feet. The pushers and graders available shifted this silt while it was still thoroughly wet. Without these machines, it would have been necessary to wait until it had dried out to some extent—and there has been no period of good weather throughout the winter to permit of the silt drying out.” Similarly, the slip at Tatapouri could not have been dealt with under the old methods until fine weather prevailed. It would have been impossible to put a sufficient number of men on with shovels and wheelbarrows to keep pace with the rate at which the slip was falling. Scoop teams would have been almost as helpless in the face of the prevailing conditions; but the mechanised units were able to work right along, moving huge quantities of debris as it fell on the roadlevel. “What we have to face after the close of winter is a general deterioration of road foundations, brought about by the deep penetration of this winter’s rains. There are parts of the district where the hills are completely impregnated with water, and where subsidences will be likely long after the surface has dried out. It will take a long time to deal with all these sources of trouble, and to restore the road system to the standard it had achieved in this district up to the end of last summer,” the district engineer concluded. As an indication of the exceptional conditions with which the highways and county authorities have been struggling, it is stated that at Tarewa an official guage recorded 33in. of rain during July, and that the aggregate fall for the year up to the end of July was 121 in.