Operators clearing Seward landslide face uphill battle

Work continues to remove debris from a giant landslide covering Lowell Point Road south of Seward. The slide came down Saturday evening and cut off access to the nearly 100 people who live in the Lowell Point community and hundreds more people at the popular Lowell Point state recreation and Miller’s Landing recreation areas.
Metco contractors in Seward started work Monday to remove the debris. Owner Cole Petersen said they’re working an excavator up to the top of the slide and will clear from the top down.
“We’re just picking away at it, slow and methodically, trying to get everything off the higher parts so we can start moving more material,” Petersen said.
Petersen doesn’t have an estimate yet on how long it will take to clear. The slide is about 250 feet wide. He estimates about 20,000 to 35,000 cubic yards of material to remove. Lowell Point Road has had avalanches and smaller rock and landslides before and not infrequent road washouts from flooding. But Petersen said he’s never seen anything like this in Seward before.
“You can look down that whole road and there’s trees that are two feet around, which gives a pretty good indication that there hasn’t been anything like this, probably since it was created. This is definitely the big one and I hope there’s not more to come,” he said.
Pictures posted to social media by the city of Seward today show an excavator clawing out a ramp to the top of the slide. It looks like a toy, dwarfed by the mass of debris.
“And that’s a huge excavator, I mean, probably 165,000 pounds or more,” he said.
Petersen said he’s got two excavators and side-dump trucks at work now and a D-9 dozer that will start working once the slide pile is down to a safer level. They’re picking out trees to haul them away before they end up in Resurrection Bay and become hazards for boaters.
It’s slow going, in part because there isn’t much room to work.
“It’s not a huge working area. You can’t just throw 10 pieces of equipment at it and be done tomorrow. It was only 40 feet wide at the base of it when it started. The road is like a one-and-a-half-lane road so it didn’t start very big,” he said.
The slide slope is still unstable. Every scoop of the excavator as it works to build a ramp brings down more material from above. Petersen said he appreciates the community being understanding that the process could take a week or more.
“I think everybody is being pretty good. The community realizes the hazards and what goes into doing it. Normally you get a lot of people complaining, ‘It’s not going fast enough,’ or why they’re not working long enough. But we haven’t seen that this time. But there’s never been anything this scale, really, either. I think people are just being patent and letting us do our work. I’m just thankful nobody was in it and nobody got hurt and I hope the guys stay safe until it’s done," Petersen said.
The city set up an emergency shelter at Seward High School for anyone unable to get home to Lowell Point. Miller’s Landing is operating a water taxi from Lowell Point to the Seward Small Boat Harbor, with multiple runs back and forth each day. It’s free for anyone who lives in Lowell Point or traveling for work and $25 for anyone traveling for recreation. To book a ride, call 907-331-3113.
The city of Seward continues to post updates on its Facebook page.