No fun runs on Topanga Canyon for a while
 

Its rained a bit here lately (about 20 inches worth) and some pebbles have slid on to the road...

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1105413461.jpg

Wow - I hope that is not real.

It's real.

cool stuff........mother nature will always win.....hope no one got hurt.

Don't plan on taking Hwy 150 North to Ojai for for several months either. I got called out to start clearing the road working with Rasmussen and Caltrans late this afternoon.
I've done a lot of pretty scary work over the years with flood control etc. but this was right up there with the worst.
I have a 3 axel dump truck and arrived about 4:30PM with a buddy in his truck. Once we started heading up the closed road all you saw was mud and debris all over, with a clear area made by a loader for us to pass through.

We were talking on our radios wondering what the hell we were doing heading back in there as it was getting dark. The road was 40% washed out in one area with big cracks in the black top.
Where there was normally just a good sized stream was now a rushing river moving bolders around like there were ping pong balls. You could hear them banging into each other in the night.
We didn't haul a load as we decided it was just to dangerous at this time, Good call by everybody.

They want us back tomorrow so we'll see how it goes. There are ten trucks total and we've all worked together on different jobs for years so we kinda look out for each other. If the rains stop maybe it won't be so bad, We'll see tomorrow.
I know there is a private school back in there and several resident that might be cut off in both directions, I'm not sure, but know there not coming out the Santa Paula side for awhile.


I'll take some pic's :)

Bob, amazing. Be safe out there :)

Jeez now that's a rock!

It sucked everywhere today in Los Angeles....

I left at 6AM to get to work at the Bird as I usually do. (I live in the Valley) took me THREE HOURS to drive 10 miles..

Balboa, Sepulveda, Topanga, Coldwater, and the 405 were all CLOSED due to flooding...

12 inches of rain here since Saturday. Folks, that's downright Biblical. :eek:

"It never rains in California, but girl, don't they warn you, it pours......" :D

Heres a few pic's I shot last Tuesday when we went back up to clean up Hwy 150.
The water had gone down quite a bit in the Santa Paula creek. The one section where you see all the boulders had lot of trees and sandy beaches you could fish from before 15 days of too much rain.
We finished up for now. The road has several areas were it will require shoring and rebuilding before any heavy traffic uses it.
It's hard to see the water as it's all brown with silt in the pic's.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1105786830.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1105786892.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1105787430.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1105787525.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1105787758.jpg
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1105788412.jpg

You can see how high up on the trees the water was in this last shot.

I love real pics.. thx

The local news covered the rock's removal: four separate dynamite blasts. they estimated the weight at 300 tons.

I have driven past/under that rock a few times... thinking, whew, when that goes its going to leave a mark!

Mankind...we're arrogant little ants, thinking we have things in control. Then momma nature decides to stomp on our ant hill. True to our nature, we then get busy with rebuilding.

Well said. I like Carlin's words on it....

There is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are ****ed. Difference. The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We've been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we've only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT to think that somehow we're a threat? That somehow we're gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that's just a-floatin' around the sun?

The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles...hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worlwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages...And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet...the planet...the planet isn't going anywhere. WE ARE!

You wanna know how the planet's doing? Ask those people at Pompeii, who are frozen into position from volcanic ash, how the planet's doing.

hey bob whats your job at the site? do you get to use any of that big equipment? Big machines are the shizzle.

Carlin is right; we do not have the capability to destroy the earth, only the species that inhabit it at this time. (And we are doing a pretty fast job of that). The earth will always be fine, a few thousand years and it will repair itself good as new.(A blink of an eye in the earth's life). :cool:

Bluebullet

I believe that's Bob's backhoe. He does earthwork for a living.

I just trucked on this job ( Hauled mud ) I have a 1 yard skiploader. It's small compaired to the Cat wheel loader in the picture that has about a 4+ yard bucket.

wow, so Carlin gets one right for a change! as for the rock, that just has to be a right-wing conspiracy. I just know that Bush personally pushed that rock. I just know it