Crews with contractor Charles Blalock & Sons continued drilling the unstable rock face on the west side of the main slide area as they prepare for a series of trim blasts that will begin Thursday morning.
More than 100 individual holes have been drilled during the last week. Those holes will be loaded with explosives and charges will be detonated incrementally in order to remove small sections of unstable rock at a time. This will minimize seismic activity at the TVA Ocoee 2 Dam which is currently overtopping due to recent rains.
The trim blasts are intended to break up an unstable rock seam and expose an underlying layer of stable rock that will be less susceptible to future slides.
Crews also continued scaling operations today on the upper east side of the slide mass to remove loose boulders and debris and to make it safer for drilling operations to take place as work progresses to the east.
The contractor plans to begin removing debris from the roadway surface beginning Friday and will work from the west to the east in order to allow the 275-ton crawler crane to continue eastward with drilling and trim blasting operations. The debris and boulders will be broken up into manageable sizes using a ram-hoe and then will be loaded onto dump trucks and hauled from the site. It is expected that it will take approximately 3,000 to 4,000 dump truck loads to completely remove the slide debris from the site.
U.S. 64 in Polk County is closed at mile marker 17.6 due to a major rockslide near the Ocoee 2 Dam. A portion of Little Frog Mountain slid into the roadway on Nov. 10.
Motorists traveling to the area from Chattanooga or Cleveland should take I-75 North to Exit 60 (SR-68, Sweetwater) and follow SR-68 South through McMinn County and into Ducktown in Polk County. Those traveling from North Carolina are advised to take US-74 to SR-68 North at Ducktown through McMinn County then onto I-75 at Sweetwater in Monroe County.
Motorists may also utilize a route through northern Georgia to travel around the rockslide area. From Copperhill/McCaryville at the Georgia State Line take Georgia Route 5 to U.S. Highway 76 to U.S. Highway 411 north to the Tennessee state line and on into Cleveland.
TDOT is providing a live look at the work underway to clear the rockslide via a time-lapse camera accessible by logging onto TDOT's US-64 Rockslide web page (http://bit.ly/1Tlc8m) where you can also sign up to receive the weekly US-64 Rockslide newsletter.
For more information on TDOT road construction projects visit the TDOT SmartWay web site at http://www.tn.gov/tdot/tdotsmartway/. Travelers may also dial "511" for travel information or follow TDOT on Twitter. For statewide traffic updates follow TN511 or for the Chattanooga area, including updates on the US64 rockslide, follow Chattanooga511.