Equipment World Digital Magazine
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"They couldn't fill it up completely at one time because they were concerned about the pressure that would be placed against that retaining wall," Othon says. They also had to contend with drivers wanting to travel through the area and those who just wanted to get a selfie with the sinkhole. "A lot of people were curious," she says. "… They were getting too close to the work that was going on." So the contractor put up orange fencing around the entire area to keep gawkers out. Harper said his crews worked around the clock to secure the retaining wall on the toll road with braces. "We worked day and night," he says. "We got the wall braced so that when they filled that sinkhole up with concrete it wouldn't bust out." Then Harper Brothers crews began excavating the pavement and subgrade on the southbound lanes. ISI came in to grade and replace the concrete on the tollway. The tollway's northbound lanes were deemed to have no damage and were reopened the day after being pumped out. After the sinkhole was filled in, Wil- liams Brothers rebuilt the frontage road pavement and had two lanes back open September 12, Othon says. All lanes were open three days later. 'Incredibly large impact to traffic' "Everything along this bayou was closed," says Tyler of the flooded Buf- falo Bayou, which runs east through the city of Houston. "If you lived north of the bayou and worked south one mile away, it was tak- ing you three hours to make the whole loop around to get to your office. It was an incredibly large impact to traffic." Tyler says having the toll road back in action by September 11 was a big boost for the city's mobility. It couldn't have come any later, either. It opened around 5 a.m. September 11, the day that students returned to school after being out for two weeks because of the storm. "With having these two contractors working together as well as they did," Tyler says, "I was impressed by how quickly it happened. … They did a great job with getting everything done and opened." Othon also cited TxDOT's contractor as playing a cru- cial role in reopening the frontage road. "The fact that they came out there on a Thursday morning, and by 10 a.m., had crews and equipment on- site – it's a good example of the relation- ship we have with our contractors that we work with on a daily basis," she said. Reopening the frontage road also provided much-needed access to nearby flooded neighborhoods. "By us being able to open up this frontage road as quickly as we were able to, that helped those local residents who were trying to get in and out of their neighborhoods to start that demolition process on their homes," she says. Harper says he was honored his com- pany could help and was particularly proud of his employees, some of whom had home damage of their own. "To have people and equipment work- ing within a couple of hours of the call, I felt like the reaction time was there. Everyone had a great attitude," he says. "We had not discussed anything in terms of payment; that was not a priority. "It was just, 'Tell us what you need, and we'll get out there and get 'er done.'" November 2017 | EquipmentWorld.com 66 highway contractor | continued Harvey by the numbers Top rainfall report in inches; recorded in Nederland, Texas Top mph wind-gust report; recorded in Port Aransas, Texas Number of roads closed at peak flooding in the state of Texas Cubic feet of debris removed by TxDOT crews, as of October 16 Estimated damage to Texas road infrastructure, signs, signals, buildings and ferry operations, as of October 2 Source: The Weather Channel, TxDOT 60.58 132 500-plus 10 million $134 million Work gets underway to repair a Beltway 8 frontage road where a sinkhole had formed beside it. Road crews repair the southbound lanes of the Sam Houston Tollway, a section covered by an estimated 70 million gallons of water from the rain-swollen Buffalo Bayou. Crews had to first brace the retaining wall (at left), which backed up to a large sinkhole, to make the work area safe. Source: TxDOT Source: TxDOT