Knik Construction and the Alaska Department of Transportation continue to make progress on repairing the Nome-Council road. Crews have reached mile 24 and a DOT official says their goal is to have the road passable all the way through Solomon later in October.
The crews are not only competing with freeze-up as temperatures are dropping but also another fall storm that is forecast to impact the Bering and Chukchi Seas starting Oct. 5.
The department’s goal is to, “open the road completely before freeze up for people who still need to get to their camps on the Nome-Council road,” DOT’s Western District superintendent Calvin Schaeffer said.
As of the morning of Oct. 3, construction crews are still working at mile 24, trying to connect the road across two ends of the Safety Sound channel. If there is not much local traffic on the roads, then the repair work will be able to be completed sooner, Schaeffer said.
That section of road was hit hardest by the remnants of Typhoon Merbok the weekend of Sept. 16, forming a new channel into Safety and rendering the bridge unusable. On the Cape Nome side, crews are also working from mile 13 through mile 24 to meet up with the other teams near Safety Bridge.
Simultaneously, Schaeffer also pointed out that construction crews are working on East Front Street in town, so the public should expect road closures in that area until repairs are finished.
DOT will release more updates on Nome’s road conditions throughout the week.
Image at top: Construction at the Safety Sound bridge area. Photo by Danielle Slingsby, used with permission, 2022.
