Latest / Talking Michigan Transportation / More deluges, more washouts on the iconic Tunnel of Trees

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More deluges, more washouts on the iconic Tunnel of Trees · Talking Michigan Transportation

• 0:07
  Jeff Cranson: Hello, welcome to the Talking Michigan Transportation Podcast.
• 0:10
  Jeff Cranson: I'm Jeff Cranson.
• 0:11
  Jeff Cranson: This is a bit of an emergency episode to update people on what's going on with the latest round of heavy rains and flooding that is washing away some roads in northern Michigan.
• 0:28
  Jeff Cranson: This is the second time in just a few months that this has happened.
• 0:31
  Jeff Cranson: And the much-beloved M-119, also known as the Tunnel of Trees in Emmet County, is again one of the harshest recipients of this weather.
• 0:43
  Jeff Cranson: I spoke briefly with Senator John Damoose, who represents that area.
• 0:48
  Jeff Cranson: He lives at Harvard Springs and he surveyed the area on Tuesday, June 30th, the day after those rains did the damage.
• 0:58
  Jeff Cranson: And I also spoke with Bill Wahl, who is the acting North Region engineer for MDOT, and he was also out there on Tuesday surveying the damage up and down.
• 1:10
  Jeff Cranson: And he spoke about what's going to be involved both short-term and long term in the repairs, in addition to the work that was already going on to repair the damage from those floods back in April.
• 1:23
  Jeff Cranson: And he also talked about some of the other roads in that area, M-88, M-66, that also had some wash out because of the flooding.
• 1:32
  Jeff Cranson: I hope you find this informative and I think that this is going to be an ongoing issue with more volatile weather and some of these extreme weather events that are going to be affecting infrastructure.
• 1:45
  Jeff Cranson: And I don't know that there's any uh way that we're going to have the funding necessary in Michigan at the national level and other all the other states that are dealing with building for resiliency and what's going to be needed if this becomes the new normal.
• 1:59
  Jeff Cranson: All right, once again I'm with State Senator John Damoose, who is of Harbor Springs and represents uh several counties in the northern lower peninsula and some of those in the eastern upper peninsula.
• 2:13
  Jeff Cranson: He has uh been on the podcast before, um, very good communicator.
• 2:18
  Jeff Cranson: I always enjoy talking with him, although not under these circumstances.
• 2:23
  Jeff Cranson: Uh, this is the second time some roads in his district have been racked by some major rain events causing flooding and washouts, especially on M119, also known as the Tunnel of Trees, to people, not just in the rest of Michigan, but other states who travel there.
• 2:41
  Jeff Cranson: It's a frequent tourist destination, and this is really sad.
• 2:45
  Jeff Cranson: Um, he got a chance to go out there today and look around.
• 2:48
  Jeff Cranson: So I just kind of wanted to get his take on it, um, in addition to already talking to some of the engineers there about the specifics.
• 2:57
  Jeff Cranson: So, Senator, thank you as always for taking time for this.
• 3:00
  Jeff Cranson: Could you just tell me a little bit of what you saw?
• 3:03
  Senator John Damoose: Yeah, Jeff, and thanks for having me on.
• 3:05
  Senator John Damoose: I love that you do these podcasts.
• 3:07
  Senator John Damoose: And um, and so, and I love you guys have been great to work with.
• 3:11
  Senator John Damoose: In fact, so I went up to M-119, which is a statewide treasure.
• 3:14
  Senator John Damoose: There's no question, everybody loves the tunnel of trees.
• 3:17
  Senator John Damoose: It's internationally renowned.
• 3:19
  Senator John Damoose: And in fact, when I pulled on to 119 today, I noticed the beautiful job that you guys did with the chip seal.
• 3:26
  Senator John Damoose: Um, I mean, the road looks great, it's all ready for summer.
• 3:29
  Senator John Damoose: Other than, oh, when we had that flooding a few weeks ago, we had that whole area just collapsed.
• 3:35
  Senator John Damoose: And I know that's gonna be a long time to fix.
• 3:37
  Senator John Damoose: And then what I saw today was shocking.
• 3:40
  Senator John Damoose: I mean, I I don't know why this stuff is happening now, and um, I don't know if it relates to prior damage from the prior flooding or anything like that, but we went to several areas.
• 3:50
  Senator John Damoose: We were down on Lampkin Road beneath um 119.
• 3:53
  Senator John Damoose: I was with uh State Representative Parker Fairburn, who's also also represents this district.
• 3:58
  Senator John Damoose: And and you know, the cliffs are just sort of it's just like what you see in California, these mudslides.
• 4:04
  Senator John Damoose: And then we went over to an area called Devil's Elbow, which is really well known.
• 4:08
  Senator John Damoose: It's a beautiful part of the road, and that that part's closed off.
• 4:11
  Senator John Damoose: The road is still there, but it looks like it's hanging on by a thread.
• 4:14
  Senator John Damoose: I mean, it's a sheer cliff now, um uh from all the washout.
• 4:19
  Senator John Damoose: And so I I'm assuming that's why you guys have it closed, because it doesn't look safe to me.
• 4:23
  Jeff Cranson: No, I I think in fact, last night when the water was still gushing there, I saw some images which I'll post with the podcast, and it looked like it might not survive into today.
• 4:34
  Jeff Cranson: So I think it's I think it's very precarious from what I'm seeing and hearing.
• 4:38
  Senator John Damoose: It is, and it's such a unique road.
• 4:40
  Senator John Damoose: I'm sure, I'm sure it is, in one sense, a crown jewel for you all, and I'm sure on the other sense it's a total headache because the way it's built is just, I mean, what makes it great also probably makes it very difficult to maintain.
• 4:53
  Senator John Damoose: You know, it's not an overly wide road, it's very curvy, positioned up sort of on the cliffs there.
• 4:59
  Senator John Damoose: And um, and uh, but I don't remember ever having these problems before.
• 5:03
  Senator John Damoose: And I I don't know if it's just the extreme weather we had this year or over the past few years or what's causing this, but everybody's very, very concerned, and especially the residents and the businesses along the way.
• 5:14
  Senator John Damoose: I went to the Good Heart store today, and I've known them for since I was a kid up there, and and they're just beside themselves because you know, with all the with all the damage to the roads and which leads towards detours, and they're really concerned about people stopping at their business or not, and whether they're gonna be able to make it.
• 5:31
  Senator John Damoose: And they've been around for over 50 years.
• 5:33
  Senator John Damoose: So that'd be a real shame if those things start to close up.
• 5:36
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, there's uh going to the cause, there's a lot of discussion at the US DOT level and among other states about building for resiliency, understanding that these volatile weather events are happening with more frequency and you're getting, you know, just bigger deluges.
• 5:55
  Jeff Cranson: It's not so much um that we have rain events.
• 5:58
  Jeff Cranson: Obviously, we always have rain events, especially in the summer and we get into these humid periods as we get into July and August.
• 6:05
  Jeff Cranson: But the ones we do have are more extreme and more severe.
• 6:09
  Jeff Cranson: And yeah, I mean, when you you build alongside the Great Lakes and different kinds of soils, obviously, um nothing is meant to withstand that much rain at once.
• 6:22
  Jeff Cranson: So um I know you've probably talked to your colleagues about this, and maybe you've talked to U.S.
• 6:28
  Jeff Cranson: Representative Jack Bergman, um, but long term we're gonna have to figure out some funding that can make these roads sustainable.
• 6:36
  Senator John Damoose: Uh absolutely we are.
• 6:37
  Senator John Damoose: And I mean, we we need to be doing that.
• 6:39
  Senator John Damoose: I know everybody's very budget conscious, as we should be.
• 6:42
  Senator John Damoose: This is why we don't want to waste money where we don't have to, because we have actual real world needs like our roads and like preparing for emergencies.
• 6:51
  Senator John Damoose: And you know, we've been hit a couple of years in a row.
• 6:53
  Senator John Damoose: Last year in the spring, up north, we got this ice storm, which just devastated our area.
• 6:58
  Senator John Damoose: I mean, it's still a mess in the woods and and with the trees, and this is gonna be damage that lasts for a long, long time.
• 7:04
  Senator John Damoose: And then then in March of this year, we saw this this unbelievable snow event.
• 7:10
  Senator John Damoose: And we all panicked because we thought there was the there was a chance this was gonna become an ice storm number two.
• 7:16
  Senator John Damoose: And when we found out it wasn't, we all had fun with this.
• 7:19
  Senator John Damoose: We're like, this is great.
• 7:20
  Senator John Damoose: Okay, we we dodged a bullet here.
• 7:22
  Senator John Damoose: Uh at my own house, I had over 30 inches of snow, not drifts, just snow, in uh less than uh 48 hours.
• 7:29
  Senator John Damoose: It was crazy.
• 7:30
  Senator John Damoose: But um, we didn't really dodge a bullet.
• 7:33
  Senator John Damoose: We misread that because that's what ended up causing this incredible flooding all winter or uh or the spring, which almost destroyed a number of dams up here, and we were uh that's where that one part of M119 collapsed.
• 7:45
  Senator John Damoose: And and I think what we're seeing now is still the product of some of that.
• 7:49
  Senator John Damoose: I mean, I'm not an structural engineer or road engineer or anything like that, but but I am real concerned, um, and I hope I know you guys are too, that you're gonna be looking deeply into this, into the viability of that road right now and the safety of that road.
• 8:02
  Senator John Damoose: I mean, uh what's under eroded underneath, we I guess we don't know, do we?
• 8:06
  Jeff Cranson: No, that's what they're they're looking at.
• 8:08
  Jeff Cranson: There are a lot of people out there, both you know, bridge engineers and structural engineers, taking a look at this and trying to figure out um short-term and long term what's going to need to happen.
• 8:20
  Jeff Cranson: And it's it's interesting that this came down just a week after uh the department issued a news release saying that the plan was to start work on one of the sections that were destroyed in that previous flooding that you were talking about.
• 8:37
  Jeff Cranson: Um, and that was supposed to include work where it's closed between uh West Stutzmanville Road and Turpening Road, and try to provide access to homes and businesses that are maintained there.
• 8:49
  Jeff Cranson: But now that's obviously gonna be uh slowed down or disrupted because of this.
• 8:55
  Jeff Cranson: And now we've got several other sections, and you know, that washout near Division Road, south across village, during that same April flooding event, that remains closed.
• 9:04
  Jeff Cranson: I'm sure you're very familiar with it.
• 9:05
  Jeff Cranson: And on top of that, we've got yeah, we've got M66 near East Jordan closed with a culvert failure, and M-88 east of Eastport in Antrim County, and M88 near Farrell Road in Antrim County.
• 9:19
  Jeff Cranson: Unfortunately for you, those are all in your district.
• 9:22
  Senator John Damoose: They are, in fact, you know, it's it's nice because in the Senate we have a few uh, you know, a little bit of extra staff.
• 9:27
  Senator John Damoose: So I we've been sort of fanning out um through my staff and I throughout the day to M-88 and 66, and we've been up there, uh, been up taking pictures and talking to people up there.
• 9:37
  Senator John Damoose: I took 119 because it's just a few miles from our house, but um, there's a lot of damage up here, and there's a lot of damage still to be repaired from this year's earlier storms.
• 9:46
  Senator John Damoose: Well, one thing I have a concern on, and and you guys do a great job uh at MDOT with communications, but we're gonna have to be real clear.
• 9:53
  Senator John Damoose: If there is a problem um this weekend, uh this is the biggest weekend up north ever.
• 10:00
  Senator John Damoose: I mean, the 4th of July is unbelievable.
• 10:02
  Senator John Damoose: The number of people who come from out of state and from downstate, we want them to come.
• 10:06
  Senator John Damoose: I mean, this we're still open, but if there are areas that aren't safe, we need to be able to tell people stay away from this area here.
• 10:13
  Senator John Damoose: Because um, you know, there's gonna be a ton of out-of-town visitors for this weekend for sure.
• 10:18
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, we're gonna have to talk about how to get very creative.
• 10:22
  Jeff Cranson: Um part of the reason that I wanted to talk to you was to help with getting the word out to media downstate so that people are aware before they get up there of what they're facing.
• 10:32
  Jeff Cranson: Because so far, um, I I mean there's a lot of coverage obviously in the northern Michigan media, but I don't think that there's a great deal of awareness of this um, you know, down here south of the knuckles, as they say.
• 10:44
  Senator John Damoose: Yeah, you know, it's funny, we had the same problem with the ice storm where people with LC really didn't get a grasp of it.
• 10:51
  Senator John Damoose: You know what?
• 10:52
  Senator John Damoose: I think a lot of it had to do with the type of disasters we're having up here.
• 10:56
  Senator John Damoose: They don't look like when a hurricane or a tornado hits.
• 11:00
  Senator John Damoose: I mean, there aren't just leveled, flattened buildings, even with the ice storm, there was a lot of damage, but it wasn't something that just readily comes across on the TV screen, like when you see this giant flooding in Texas, which where it washes away an entire camp and kills all these people.
• 11:16
  Senator John Damoose: It's not, it doesn't look like that.
• 11:18
  Senator John Damoose: So I think it's harder to relate to it.
• 11:19
  Senator John Damoose: But when I in fact, I had that frustration today when I was standing peering over the edge of this incredible washed-out area.
• 11:27
  Senator John Damoose: I mean, it looked like a part of the Grand Canyon, but every picture I was taking didn't quite capture it.
• 11:32
  Senator John Damoose: I was I was like, this doesn't look anything as b near as bad as what I'm seeing with my own eyes.
• 11:37
  Senator John Damoose: And so I think in in that um with that knowledge there, I think it's kind of hard to tell the story downstate.
• 11:46
  Senator John Damoose: People just sort of miss it a little bit.
• 11:48
  Senator John Damoose: But but it's a big deal.
• 11:49
  Senator John Damoose: I mean, I do want people to understand it's not you'll still be able to get around, do all the same things you can do on the 4th of July.
• 11:54
  Senator John Damoose: It's just on certain roads, we may have some detours and a little bit of delays here and there, but it'll be a great weekend.
• 12:00
  Senator John Damoose: It's open up here, but we need everybody to know what's going on because frankly, we need help.
• 12:05
  Senator John Damoose: And we we never ended up securing state level funding for the ice storm relief.
• 12:09
  Senator John Damoose: We got a lot of federal funding, but we're still working on that, and and we're gonna need some funding to help rebuild these roads that everybody around the state enjoys.
• 12:17
  Jeff Cranson: Well, I mean, talk about those.
• 12:19
  Jeff Cranson: I know you're a very patient listener, but talk about how those conversations go with those businesses owners and constituents there who you've known for a long time, and and they kind of look to you like like help.
• 12:32
  Jeff Cranson: And what do you say?
• 12:33
  Senator John Damoose: Yeah, I mean, you you know, it's it's it this is something that I've really learned throughout my five years now in the legislature is we just don't have the power that a lot of people think we do.
• 12:42
  Senator John Damoose: We don't have, I mean, we can it's an important job, we can accomplish things, but it's much slower than anybody thinks.
• 12:48
  Senator John Damoose: And I'm just one of 148 people down there in the legislature making the case to help our area amidst a group of people who also have issues within their own areas there.
• 12:58
  Senator John Damoose: So it's a slower process, and that's usually what I have to explain.
• 13:02
  Senator John Damoose: I find it really frustrating because frankly, I wish I had a magic wand.
• 13:06
  Senator John Damoose: There is a person uh um who I was up um meeting with the uh uh owner of the Good Hard store this morning, the Good Hard General store, which is just a classic place.
• 13:14
  Senator John Damoose: It's been around for over 50 years, and she was telling me about someone they know who's basically homebound and her in her there's so much debris in her house as of last night, and they don't know what to do with it and how to get it.
• 13:27
  Senator John Damoose: There aren't even resources to help clean it up.
• 13:29
  Senator John Damoose: The woman is beside herself, and and I just breaks my heart.
• 13:32
  Senator John Damoose: I wish we could just go make a wave of magic wand and make it better, but that's not how the legislature works or the budgeting process or anything like that.
• 13:41
  Senator John Damoose: So a lot of our conversations that I have are yes, we are we want to help.
• 13:45
  Senator John Damoose: Yes, we are gonna do everything we can to help, but it's a lot of it, it's sort of setting their expectations right, you know, that this is a longer, slower process than anything you might imagine.
• 13:54
  Senator John Damoose: And I'd rather underpromise and then over-deliver than the other way around.
• 13:59
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, I think that's a good way to put it, that you want to say uh this is what we need to do, and that, you know, it's it's about education, it's about educating them on the process and how it works and how appropriations work and what the priorities are and what's going on with the rest of the state.
• 14:16
  Jeff Cranson: I mean, it's human nature.
• 14:17
  Jeff Cranson: We can all be a little insular and a little inside our own bubble.
• 14:21
  Jeff Cranson: Um, and we've got a whole state surrounded by water.
• 14:23
  Jeff Cranson: We've got these kinds of issues, but really nothing these last few years is as extreme as what you're dealing with, especially in M119.
• 14:33
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, and it doesn't make sense.
• 14:35
  Senator John Damoose: When I said at that Devil's Elbow today, I mean it was just the uh the most unbelievable scene because the road is beautiful because you guys just resurfaced it.
• 14:45
  Senator John Damoose: And all that part, even the white lines are still intact.
• 14:48
  Senator John Damoose: But right at the edge of the white line, it's like broken off into a cliff.
• 14:53
  Senator John Damoose: And it's just the strangest thing to see this is a total disaster, but it's happening in slow motion.
• 14:58
  Senator John Damoose: I mean, we don't know whether that's gonna survive or not.
• 15:01
  Senator John Damoose: I I don't know how it does.
• 15:03
  Senator John Damoose: Um, but and I don't mean to be a doomsayer here, but it's just you guys have such an incredible job.
• 15:09
  Senator John Damoose: It's amazing.
• 15:10
  Senator John Damoose: It sort of never ends with the amount of work you have, and I sympathize with it with the job that you do.
• 15:15
  Senator John Damoose: You do a great job, and hopefully we'll be here to help you uh with a good budget here coming up, and especially as we go into the future, and begin to put more of these money, these monies aside for uh special projects, but also for disasters as they occur.
• 15:30
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, no, I I appreciate that you um have good things to say about the MDOT engineers and maintenance crews, both uh at the the direct force level, those actually working for MDOT and the contract, the counties that do a lot of the work on those roads in the north region where you live.
• 15:47
  Jeff Cranson: And uh that's that's good to hear because they are a very committed and dedicated bunch.
• 15:52
  Jeff Cranson: So, Senator, thank you for taking a little bit of time to talk about this and what you've seen out there.
• 15:58
  Jeff Cranson: We'll be um checking in again, I think, as things go forward and we figure out what the what the longer term plan is going to be.
• 16:05
  Senator John Damoose: Yeah, just keep me posted and thanks for having all your crew out there today looking at this.
• 16:10
  Senator John Damoose: And uh, we're here to help.
• 16:12
  Senator John Damoose: Let me know how I can be it and be helpful in this whole process.
• 16:14
  Senator John Damoose: Uh, and I look forward to working with you in the future.
• 16:17
  Jeff Cranson: All right, thank you.
• 16:17
  Jeff Cranson: We'll talk again soon.
• 16:19
  Jeff Cranson: Please stay tuned.
• 16:20
  Jeff Cranson: We'll be back with more talking Michigan transportation right after this.
• 16:27
  MDOT Message: The Michigan Department of Transportation reminds you that when a vehicle collides with another vehicle, person, or other object, it is a crash, not an accident.
• 16:36
  MDOT Message: By reducing human error, we can prevent crashes and rebuild Michigan roads safely.
• 16:42
  Jeff Cranson: Hello again.
• 16:43
  Jeff Cranson: As promised, I'm with Bill Wahl, who uh, as of when I'm recording today on June 30th, is the acting region engineer for MDOT's North Region.
• 16:53
  Jeff Cranson: Uh he is otherwise the associate region engineer and has been for some time.
• 16:58
  Jeff Cranson: He'll be handing off the acting title to uh someone else uh tomorrow.
• 17:04
  Jeff Cranson: Uh and I should mention that this is all because uh Scott Thayer, the longtime North Region engineer, retired a couple weeks ago.
• 17:12
  Jeff Cranson: Um certainly we wish him the best.
• 17:15
  Jeff Cranson: He's always been a very thoughtful and compassionate leader, and I know that he's probably feeling a little bittersweet about leaving and having this issue now to deal with.
• 17:27
  Jeff Cranson: But Bill, um, let's start by saying for uh the second time in just a couple months, you're surveying roads that are literally uh washing away because of heavy deluges and rainfall.
• 17:42
  Bill Wahl: Yeah, we had two areas that just got torrential rainfall yesterday along the M88 corridor from US 31 and Eastport over towards Central Lake, and then also up on M119 in the Tunnel Tree section north of Harbor Springs.
• 17:59
  Bill Wahl: Both of them were still waiting for final numbers from the weather service.
• 18:02
  Bill Wahl: But looking at the radar and like how much they're projecting on the radar for now.
• 18:07
  Bill Wahl: You're looking at five to seven plus inches of rain in some of these areas and an hour to two hours, which is that's just a lot of water that came down in a really short period of time.
• 18:16
  Bill Wahl: And we've got a lot of sections of road that washed out and shoulders that have washed away.
• 18:20
  Bill Wahl: Um, it's definitely some interesting challenges that had on some of these sections of road, especially coming right before the Fourth of July holiday.
• 18:28
  Jeff Cranson: Let's talk about the chronology here.
• 18:30
  Jeff Cranson: Um, I think it got on my radar when you sent some messages uh to our COO, Greg Brunner, yesterday morning, Monday morning, June 29th.
• 18:40
  Jeff Cranson: When did the storms hit and when did you realize uh how bad this was gonna be?
• 18:46
  Bill Wahl: So the storms hit yesterday during the middle of the day.
• 18:49
  Bill Wahl: I mean, there were two different sections of the storm.
• 18:51
  Bill Wahl: There was one that went through the M88 corridor, and that was in late morning, maybe 10 o'clock and noonish.
• 18:57
  Bill Wahl: Um, I happened to be sitting in a different meeting and was watching on the radar uh the storm system because it was coming directly towards Gaylord where I worked, but was just watching this red lab on the radar that just sat over that corridor for a really long period of time.
• 19:13
  Bill Wahl: So not too long after that, we started getting reports and pictures from staff and maintenance workers from the County Road Commission as well as our staff who were finding trying to find these issues where roads were completely submerged in water and large chunks of them got washed away.
• 19:29
  Bill Wahl: Actually, out on those sections looking at those in the afternoon.
• 19:35
  Bill Wahl: We had some other staff that were up on M119 working on issues from the spring flooding.
• 19:41
  Bill Wahl: Um, some areas we're trying to repair.
• 19:43
  Bill Wahl: And in that sum, we saw another chunk of rain was getting ready to go through there.
• 19:47
  Bill Wahl: So they ended up going through late afternoon, around three to four o'clock ish after different cell went through that area and discovered another five locations yesterday.
• 19:58
  Bill Wahl: Over the course of the night, a couple more have showed up as another seven locations with pretty significant damage along the M119 corridor yesterday afternoon.
• 20:06
  Bill Wahl: So this has all occurred within the period of about 12 hours from the start to the finish that just devastated some different sections of roadway.
• 20:16
  Jeff Cranson: So I think that timing explains um some confusion on my part.
• 20:21
  Jeff Cranson: I think I got the first message about this um uh around nine in the morning.
• 20:27
  Jeff Cranson: Um, no, actually it was later than that yesterday.
• 20:30
  Jeff Cranson: Um so on Monday, the 29th.
• 20:33
  Jeff Cranson: But I thought based on that, that that rain must have been going on, you know, if not overnight.
• 20:39
  Jeff Cranson: At least it started in the wee hours of the morning.
• 20:42
  Jeff Cranson: And the fact that that all happened that fast, I guess that really goes to that's a testament to how much rain came all at once.
• 20:49
  Bill Wahl: Yeah, that was the the crazy part about it is normally because earlier in the day we looked at, I got up, I took the weather in the morning and it didn't really show any rain.
• 20:59
  Bill Wahl: And then as the morning went on, it started to show that we're gonna get storms.
• 21:03
  Bill Wahl: And typically when you see these kind of pop-up thunderstorms, they move really quickly.
• 21:08
  Bill Wahl: Um, they may be intense, but they kind of get cut across the air very fast.
• 21:13
  Bill Wahl: And these ones just went really slow with really heavy rain.
• 21:18
  Bill Wahl: Um, and that's what would cause the issues.
• 21:21
  Bill Wahl: I mean, five to seven inches of rain in 24 hours would be a substantial storm.
• 21:27
  Bill Wahl: Five to seven inches of rain in an hour to two hours is just an incredible amount of water that all was trying to get through the system in an instant and ended up backing up and causing flooding.
• 21:40
  Bill Wahl: And in the response where the water appeared to be ten higher than what it typically would be, and it backed up behind lines and shoulders and gone over the road.
• 21:51
  Bill Wahl: And the water managed to make it over the road.
• 21:58
  Bill Wahl: We were in one and there was I was on a curve area, and at the top of the curve, one of my coworkers was there and he was parked on top of a dead fish that had ended up on the road during the flooding.
• 22:12
  Bill Wahl: And so it's just pure flash flooding.
• 22:15
  Jeff Cranson: Wow.
• 22:16
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, so you've been in the region for quite some time, and the the north region is uh huge geographically.
• 22:23
  Jeff Cranson: It touches Lake Michigan, it touches Lake Huron and has shoreline on the straits.
• 22:28
  Jeff Cranson: So a lot of a lot of waterfront.
• 22:30
  Jeff Cranson: Um, do you remember a period like this since in your time there, where you had this much damage from flooding and in uh just a couple of months?
• 22:40
  Bill Wahl: That the the sheer number of events we've had is something that I definitely can't remember.
• 22:45
  Bill Wahl: Over the years, we've had individual events down by the Manistee area, probably 12, 13 years ago, there was a really bad set of events there that took at issues, and we had windstorm issues more like eight or nine years ago over the Lelana Peninsula.
• 23:01
  Bill Wahl: But those were all kind of standalone issues, whereas in the fact that this year we had ice storm and blizzard and then flooding and now flash floods, it's just I've never dealt with this volume of emergency situations happening one after another.
• 23:21
  Jeff Cranson: Well, those, yeah, I happen to remember because I was there when those straight line winds hit um near Glenn Arbor in Leland Alcounty.
• 23:28
  Jeff Cranson: That was actually 2015, but that didn't even do the damage to the infrastructure that this this these rains and flooding have done.
• 23:36
  Bill Wahl: No, that's the that's the difference here, is like, and even last year's ice storm really didn't damage the infrastructure.
• 23:43
  Bill Wahl: There was a lot of, I mean, an insane amount of debris we had to deal with, but the infrastructure itself wasn't damaged.
• 23:49
  Bill Wahl: So to have this many events happening so quickly where we've had substantial damage to the infrastructure is not something I have ever myself experienced.
• 23:58
  Bill Wahl: I've been in this role since 2011, and it was just a handful of times we have a little washout here or there, but not the scenario level of scenarios we're seeing right now.
• 24:08
  Jeff Cranson: So give your prognosis, I guess, segment by segment.
• 24:12
  Jeff Cranson: And I know right now there are some spots that you just don't even know, short-term or long term, what's going to happen.
• 24:20
  Jeff Cranson: But um I guess what what what do you know about the issues on M-88, M-66, and M-119?
• 24:27
  Bill Wahl: Yeah, so M88, those issues, while they're severe, are manageable.
• 24:33
  Bill Wahl: And in general, we can kind of it's relatively easy to see what the repair type is.
• 24:38
  Bill Wahl: Hopefully, a lot of those will be able to go in, remove the damaged material, rebuild the slopes that have washed away, and restore the road.
• 24:48
  Bill Wahl: Um, there's a couple of locations where I actually had projects scheduled to work on some culverts, anyways, so we'll be able to time it out with combine it with that work that we're already planning to do.
• 24:58
  Bill Wahl: M-66, we're still in an evaluation mode of what's going to happen there.
• 25:03
  Bill Wahl: That one was of all the sections off of 119, was probably the most severe damage.
• 25:09
  Bill Wahl: And we're still trying to figure out exactly all what all has been damaged.
• 25:14
  Bill Wahl: A good chunk of the road got washed away.
• 25:16
  Bill Wahl: We know there's damage under the road surface that we can't even see yet, based on where the water was and how it washed things away.
• 25:23
  Bill Wahl: And we're so that one's still a lot more of a question mark um of how substantial the repair will be.
• 25:30
  Bill Wahl: But even that that worst case scenario is we'll go in and open it up, take the existing culvert out, and put a brand new culvert in.
• 25:37
  Bill Wahl: Um, which while it's not inexpensive and it's not quick or easy, it's well within the wheelhouse of what we do.
• 25:43
  Bill Wahl: Um, M119 is probably where the biggest question marks are.
• 25:47
  Bill Wahl: I just got off of reviewing that section with another a number of other staff members from the North region.
• 25:53
  Bill Wahl: And there's some areas there where the level of damage and the washouts are just beyond what any of us have ever seen, or typically you would see in northern Michigan.
• 26:03
  Bill Wahl: M119, for those who are used to have been driven driven on it, it's a huge set of bluffs.
• 26:08
  Bill Wahl: And there's spots where the roads up 70, 80, 100 feet over the lower areas, and there's spots where there's massive washouts that have just gone all the way down, hundreds of feet long.
• 26:20
  Bill Wahl: Um, that some of those spots we're all kind of looking and saying we're not even sure yet what the solution is gonna be for those, other than it's gonna be challenging, it's gonna be expensive, and it's not gonna be fast.
• 26:33
  Bill Wahl: A number of the other locations there in 119 appear to be a little a lot more manageable.
• 26:39
  Bill Wahl: There's pretty good size washouts, but it appears that from what we see at this point and know at this point, that we could get in, remove the damaged area, start at the bottom and work our way up, and at least um they're small enough that it's manageable to fix them.
• 26:54
  Bill Wahl: There's a couple spots though where it's definitely gonna take some unique engineering and unique repair techniques to re to fix those sections.
• 27:04
  Jeff Cranson: So we'll include some photos with the the show notes, but um kind of set the scene, explain, you know, in terms of soil types and um, like you mentioned, these are on bluffs, and there's just not a lot of buffer room on either side of the road.
• 27:22
  Jeff Cranson: Just what what makes it so challenging there?
• 27:25
  Bill Wahl: Yeah, so there's a handful of different things there on one night and along that M-119 corridor, and it's a combination of the bluffs are a combination of sand and clay.
• 27:34
  Bill Wahl: So there's a lot of areas now where once water started to go through it and it started to deteriorate and degrade it, it just washes it out, and there was so much water washed rushing through yesterday that in a lot of spots the water was just going over the road, across the road, down the hills, and just taking everything with it.
• 27:52
  Bill Wahl: So now that it's all been exposed, it if there's another heavy rainstorm, it's likely to take more of the material away.
• 28:00
  Bill Wahl: It's also challenging along that tunnel and tree section in that the road is so narrow and the property we have is so narrow.
• 28:07
  Bill Wahl: I mean, M-119 itself in most spots is somewhere between 18 and 20 feet between the the white lines, which is very, very narrow to begin with.
• 28:17
  Bill Wahl: Um, a lot of areas that there's not a big buffer between the edge of the road and where it drops off down this down the bluff and down the cliffs.
• 28:26
  Bill Wahl: So as it starts to degrade, it gets can very quickly get up close to the edge of the road and potentially take the road out with it if there's a future storm.
• 28:35
  Bill Wahl: So we're being very cautious right now and trying to keep traffic off of any of the areas where there's concern points and keep things keep people away from those areas, because especially with the heat wave we're in right now, we could have additional pop-up storms pretty much at any point.
• 28:51
  Bill Wahl: And we want to make sure that we don't have future, if there is any additional deterioration, that there aren't people or vehicles in that area when it occurs.
• 29:00
  Jeff Cranson: So I can imagine the anxiety you and your colleagues probably felt yesterday because it was only a week ago, right?
• 29:07
  Jeff Cranson: That that work began to repair the the section between West Stutzmanville and Turpening roads on M-119.
• 29:15
  Bill Wahl: Yes.
• 29:15
  Bill Wahl: So we so yeah, we were just starting on that.
• 29:18
  Bill Wahl: We're still that section is the contractors there are starting to do some of the work on that section.
• 29:23
  Bill Wahl: And we have other sections throughout the region that were damaged um during the spring flooding that were in areas that were getting inundated with the rain yesterday and worrying of what more damage is going to occur to those.
• 29:35
  Bill Wahl: Thankfully, that section that is that we have the contract in place for already, and some of the other segments around northern Michigan didn't appear to take any additional damage yesterday.
• 29:46
  Bill Wahl: So that was a really good thing.
• 29:48
  Bill Wahl: But we have just lots of spots out there now that have suffered damage, not only on our system, but on the local county roads as well.
• 29:55
  Bill Wahl: That if there's another major storm event that goes through, it could definitely make them much worse really quickly, just because so much of the soil is already exposed and all the trees are trees and grass is all wiped out.
• 30:07
  Jeff Cranson: You should also mention that while uh everybody, it seems, is familiar with M-119 because of the tunnel of trees, that M-88 is a pretty important tourist highway.
• 30:19
  Jeff Cranson: Also, in Antrim County and that area that a lot of people travel to, to the lakes that are west of Mancelona.
• 30:27
  Jeff Cranson: You sounds like based on the rundown you gave us earlier, you feel a little better about the ability to repair those spots.
• 30:34
  Bill Wahl: Yeah, I definitely feel a little better about the ability to repair them.
• 30:37
  Bill Wahl: It's still not going to be super fast.
• 30:39
  Bill Wahl: Um, we were able to work with our partners at the Antrim County Road Commission and get a detour route established for M-88.
• 30:47
  Bill Wahl: Since we already had a project designed for some of those culverts, we knew where we would send traffic.
• 30:51
  Bill Wahl: So we're expediting and getting that detour put in place to try to help traffic get around that M88 section.
• 30:57
  Bill Wahl: There's a lot of it where the local traffic can still move pretty easily.
• 31:02
  Bill Wahl: Um, but there's some sections that it's totally shut down and will be for quite a while at this point.
• 31:07
  Bill Wahl: I mean, it's still too early even to really give estimates on when some of these segments are gonna be able to be fixed.
• 31:14
  Jeff Cranson: Well, I appreciate the rundown.
• 31:16
  Jeff Cranson: I know you and and Dave McCaw, who becomes acting region engineer as of tomorrow, July 1st, the day this will actually post, and most people will be hearing it.
• 31:26
  Jeff Cranson: Um, you guys are gonna have your hands full now for the next several days, and we'll be touching base again on it.
• 31:33
  Jeff Cranson: Thanks for taking time to do this.
• 31:35
  Jeff Cranson: I know how busy you are, and I really appreciate it.
• 31:37
  Bill Wahl: Oh, not a problem.
• 31:38
  Bill Wahl: I'm glad I could help out, and we just always encourage if people are out in these areas, if there's a barricade off the across the road, please respect it.
• 31:46
  Bill Wahl: Have so many people that think the barricades are for everyone else and go and move them.
• 31:50
  Bill Wahl: And if we've got and just encourage everyone, if the road is shut down, please listen and there's a reason we have those shut down.
• 31:57
  Bill Wahl: Don't try to get in there and see what's happening.
• 32:00
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, I mean, yeah, in a normal construction site, people might think if I go around the barricades, I might encounter some gravel where there's supposed to be pavement because it's in between work.
• 32:10
  Jeff Cranson: But in this case, you could be driving into a collapsed road.
• 32:14
  Jeff Cranson: Yes.
• 32:15
  Bill Wahl: Yeah, so that's always a challenge we have with these issues of trying to keep people out of them.
• 32:21
  Bill Wahl: It's really there for everyone's safety.
• 32:23
  Bill Wahl: We just want to keep all the motorists who are out there safe.
• 32:26
  Jeff Cranson: Yeah, that's a really good caution.
• 32:28
  Jeff Cranson: I I appreciate it, Bill.
• 32:29
  Jeff Cranson: Take care.
• 32:30
  Bill Wahl: Thank you.
• 32:30
  Bill Wahl: Have a great day.
• 32:31
  Jeff Cranson: I'd like to thank you once more for tuning in to Talking Michigan Transportation.
• 32:35
  Jeff Cranson: You can find show notes and more on Apple Podcasts or Buzzsprout.
• 32:39
  Jeff Cranson: I also want to acknowledge the talented people who help make this a reality each week, starting with Randy Debler, who skillfully edits the audio, Jesse Ball, who posts the content, Jacke Salinas, who hosts the podcast to various platforms, and transcribes the audio to make it accessible to all.