Highway 4 ‘better than before’

For the first time in months, Highway 4 is fully opened to traffic.

The road was first closed on June 6th as firefighters battled the Cameron Bluffs blaze and later opened to single-lane alternating traffic, often with long lines and wait times.

The province says crews removed 250 dangerous trees and one-thousand tonnes of rock debris to stabilize the bluffs above the highway.

Mayor Sharie Minions said the rock scalers were able to use the highway closure to fix pre-existing issues with the rocks, which will give travellers even greater protections than before the fire.

“We know that the extent of the work that was done gave them the ability to take care of a lot of concern areas that were there prior to the fire and the province hasn’t been able to go in because it would have required a highway closure to do some of that work,” she said. “My understanding is that a lot of that work is now done and this highway actually gave them an opportunity to do some work that would have been nice to be done but the opportunity wasn’t there. I’m optimistic that we’re actually going to be in a better position than we were going into this and I’m hopeful for a very positive fall and winter season as we will continue to monitor and I know the Ministry is on top of it.”

The province had planned to conduct blasting at Angel Rock five years ago, but cost overruns on the Kennedy Hill project was believed to have sidelined that work.