CDOT records show agency crews have closed I-70 from Glenwood Springs to Dotsero 25 times since the fire, prohibiting travel for one to 12 hours each time.
Twice this past week, big orange trucks commandeered Glenwood Canyon in western Colorado during rain, shutting down Interstate 70, one of the West’s key routes, a highway long celebrated as a national engineering wonder.
Now even relatively light rain — a quarter-inch over 15 minutes — can create havoc, federal geologists and meteorologists warn. This emerging new norm for managing hazards on an essential highway through Glenwood Canyon reflects difficult decision-making that prioritized public safety. Deliberations like this are expected to widen as cascading impacts of climate warming include increased avalanches in addition to flooding and landslides.
“Those burn scars are going to be a major headache for at least two or three more years. You might as well have paved a parking lot over that mountain landscape, poured concrete over it,” Schlatter said. “No water can infiltrate the soil. It just flows right on down the slopes and picks up whatever rocks, trees and soil are in the way.”
But risk analysis at the time didn’t contemplate wide de-stabilization of steep canyon walls. The final impact statement concluded: “Neither the base flood used for this project nor the ‘worst case’ condition will result in the potential loss of private property or introduce conditions hazardous to health or life.”
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