The gas-powered avalanche blasters that Colorado first installed a decade ago are failing, forcing state transportation officials to replace 10 units on Loveland Pass at a cost of $2 million.
Two have malfunctioned this past year, and Colorado Department of Transportation officials in a recent memo deemed the replacement of 10 Gazex blasters on the pass to be “urgent.” The machines “are now known to be unreliable,” a technology that “has required hundreds of thousands of dollars in maintenance,” the Oct. 24 memo said.
The Post learned of the problems with the blasters from the Summit Daily News.
Meanwhile, CDOT is pressing ahead with a statewide expansion of remotely controlled avalanche blasters, with costs estimated in the tens of millions to install dozens more on ridges above highways built through the mountains, including Interstate 70, and Wolf Creek, Coal Bank, Molas, and Red Mountain passes.
State highway workers in 2015 installed remotely operated avalanche-control machines on the Berthoud (U.S. Highway 40) and Loveland (U.S. Highway 6) passes using the Gazex machines, which ignite propane, oxygen, and hydrogen to produce concussive blasts.
They’re planning to purchase “something more reliable,” and “we will be replacing them in the summer,” CDOT spokeswoman Stacia Sellers said Monday.
“We’re still able to conduct avalanche mitigation” on the pass, deploying crews to use explosives-launcher systems already in place as backup, she said. “The service we provide to the traveling public on Loveland Pass is not going to change this winter season.”
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Colorado transportation officials have adopted a strategy of detonating blasters at night to trigger slides, part of efforts to keep roads open. CDOT crews fire 54 existing blasters about 200 times a year to pre-empt natural avalanches. A state inventory shows 522 avalanche paths running through mountainous portions of highways, including I-70.
The mild start of winter has brought relatively paltry snow to Colorado’s high country, reducing the risks of avalanches hitting highways. Only seven have reached roads in recent months, Sellers said.
But CDOT meteorologists anticipate possibly heavy snow between January and March, which would make it necessary to use the blasters, she said. “We’re expecting our typical active multi-day cycles that bring larger amounts of snow.”
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