McLaren MP4-12C: Super Bowl Sunday...Helicopters and Dynamite

February, 2007...I was working on the Sea to Sky Highway Improvement Project. We had several sites running and Cut 14 was one of them. It was the last cut on the job for Segment One, in the very north end, close to Ansell place. We had been working there mostly on night-shifts, because of traffic restrictions and our need to drop rocks onto the roadway as we proceeded. The rock was very soft and easy to break, but the downside was that it was so soft and "rotten", that the back wall wouldn't stay up. Every time we went to scale it with the excavator, the back wall would just crumble and peel away. In some respects we made some "free" headway. On the flip side, the soft rock didn't stop peeling off when we needed it to stop.
The first sign of trouble came from an unlikely source. One night, one of the drills broke down, right at the base of the rock face. Deader than a doornail...no go. Our shift ended prematurely because of this mechanical issue. We called the company mechanics in to fix it up for us, to be ready for the next shift.
In the morning meeting, before work, I asked the maintenance boss if everything went well with the drill repairs. His reply back was that the attending mechanic refused to work on the drill because of the rock that was falling off the rock face from above. That was not the answer I wanted to hear...we needed the drill to be running, so that we could keep our schedule, and also keep the men working. I was pissed that the job wasn't done and zoomed over from one end of the job to next at Cut 14. I went up to where the broken drill sat, and stood where the mechanic would have stood the night before.
The sensation was like the first few tentative drops from a rainfall. I could hear small rocks bouncing down the rock face. Just a few, and then nothing. Then a single slightly larger rock would bounce down. Nothing major, not large and real threatening, but it was a bad sign.

There had been no rain, and there was no wind at the moment to push around loose, precariously perched rocks. The only answer could be that the rock face was actually moving....a super slow motion collapse. That was not the conclusion that anyone was going to want hear. I pulled back to a safer area and watched more rock tumble down to the stockpile we had on the ground. I phoned my supervisor to tell him the news. He didn't want to believe that the whole thing was going to collapse, so he and some other supervision types came out to inspect. Their decision was to call in a geo-tech engineer to get another opinion. That was fine by me, but my next decision was to go and get a excavator and a cable to drag the broken drill rig out of harms way.

For whatever reason, the geo-tech deemed the rock face to be stable and safe. The management bought into that and were happy that they had a piece of paper guaranteeing the stability of the face. I responded by bringing my two driller/blaster foreman out to look, and they quickly agreed that the rock face was in fact getting ready to collapse.
So the next step was to go to the afternoon meeting and state my case in no uncertain terms....which was..it's gonna fall down. If that happens there is so much potential material that the highway could get buried and any passing cars with it. Luckily something in my pleading and ranting took hold and the big boss agreed to put round the clock spotters through the weekend while we were away. The two spotters would be equipped with air horns, flags and powerful lights, and would be there night and day. Relief help would take over every 10 to 12 hours.

Not perfect, not quite what was looking for, but not a bad response for a monster corporation. I retreated back to my home and family on the Sunshine Coast. And the spotters spotted.
On Super Bowl Sunday, 2007, at around 10 am, I got a call from the project manager. He said that the rock face had just collapsed and the Squamish Highway was completely blocked. He asked if I could come in and help with the cleanup. I told him that I was back on the coast, and many hours away. The manager said well, we'd really like to have you there. So I thought why not go big and asked if he was willing to fork out a for a helicopter ride to get me over there quickly, and without hesitation or further discussion the answer was "Yes"
Cool!...the only issue now, is the helicopter ride. Super Bowl Sunday, and my friendly neighborhood helicopter pilot, Robin MacGregor is a rabid football fan. His house is likely full of fanatic football freaks and the drinks may or may not be flowing at this hour.
When I dialed him up, all I said was "Robin, have you had your first Super Bowl drink yet?"
"Why do you need to know?"...was what he came back with.

I convinced Robin that if we left right away and zoomed over, he could drop me off and not miss hardly a thing. We had a house full of kids at the place in Roberts Creek, but it's not unusual in contractor world to have to reengage the work life on a Sunday. My wife drove me to the airport while I made calls to co-workers to see where everyone was. Striking out on fellow blasters from the company, I called my driller and hoe operator friend on the coast ( fellow Kiewit worker ) and asked him to come along. Another call went to Gary Anderson at Metro Blasting in Vancouver, to come and help with the clean up and assessment of the situation. Gary agreed to come out on short notice on a Sunday, and started to round up his hand plugging gear for drilling the boulders.

At Robin's hangar, I talked my wife into coming over for the ride and a look-see, so it was my co-worker, wife, Robin and myself heading out. The weather was less than perfect, rain and wind kicked us around a bit in the air, and the clouds made for a low ceiling. We buzzed low over the shoreline of the Sunshine Coast and then turned into Howe Sound for the trip across to the Squamish Highway side. As we approached the slide area, there were already two news helicopters hovering above the scene, at the oceans edge, looking in. Robin radioed them to let them know that we would be joining them in the line-up.So it was pretty fucking cool to be be in lineup of helicopters looking at a news event that you are going to be involved in momentarily. Rocking Robin pulled out all the stops and told the other helicopter jockeys that he had a Kiewit "Bigwig " (a.k.a. complete bullshit ) on board, and we'd be needing some maneuvering room to do a full inspection. So the newsies pulled back as we circled around the scene, and I snapped a few photos with the small camera.

We made a decision to put down on the roadway to have a closer look, and to touch base with the ground crew already there. The problem with this idea was that the best place to land had a police car sitting in the way. We swung in low and close to try and get someones attention, so that we could get the car moved. We tried to wave at a Kiewit guy that I knew, Jim Doyle, but he also thought that it was company heavy weights in the chopper, and he didn't have all of his safety paraphernalia on, so he didn't want to turn towards the hovering helicopter. Finally with enough frantic waving out the side window, and low flying, the policeman finally clued in to what we needed and moved his cruiser. Robin moved into position to land on the pavement. I had done a ton of hairy flying with Robin, so the approach by the power lines and rock-bluffs didn't concern me too much. My wife and co-worker weren't too happy with the tight quarters landing and looked a little pale and queasy.

Rocking Robin MacGregor after landing just south of the 2007 slide area

Once one the ground, I hooked up with one of the Kiewit bosses, Rick Berg. He filled me in on the story. Apparently two of the scaling crew were on watch duty in the morning, and noticed some accelerated rock fall coming down. ( Likely helped by the rain storm ) The two brothers Sam and Arlen Fitzpatrick pretty much hurled themselves right in to live traffic to stop cars and trucks from entering the danger zone....and in seconds the whole face let go and rumbled down to the road. Their actions saved the motorists in both directions from certain injury or death. ( sadly, tragically, Sam would be killed in a work related accident almost exactly two years later in Toba Inlet ...while working with his brother Arlen ) That's a whole other story, and one that pisses me off every time I think about it.
Anyways back to the tale.

Assessing the damage and making a plan

Rick Berg ( back to camera ) and a consultant

We were going to have to hook up with Gary Anderson, from Metro Blasting and go get the explosives that we were going to need to break one of the huge boulders. A quick call confirmed that Gary was getting close. Robin and I decided to fly over to the Westport Kiewit office to hook up with Gary and get a company truck. When we lifted off from the highway and circled over for more photos...I noticed a brown Chevy SUV driving through the closure and squeezing past the huge boulder heading north. I thought this was kind of odd, because we had all just agreed that it was a no-go area until we deemed it safe for the public or even emergency vehicles. As it turned out, this would be the first time that we would run into the Federales Olympic security force, a kind of Emergency Response/Swat Team. They were dressed in all black with black toques and were armed to the teeth. Their single statement was "We are going through". And so they did....keep in mind this is 3 yrs before the Olympics.

Robin had been flying in and out of the West Vancouver construction office yard for the last year, so it was old hat to drop in there. At that point, Robin needed to get back to his Super Bowl festivities, so he offered a return ride to my wife, who had no interest in watching boys break rocks ( been there done that )....and off they went. Gary and I went to our explosives storage magazine to get the goodies we would need and headed out to the rock slide. The police had a roadblock at Horseshoe Bay that we had to get past, and then straight work. The only task we had as blasters, was to drill and bust up the cabin sized boulder that sat on the road. Simple enough. We set up with Gary's gear and went to work. A few hand plugger holes and a fairly light explosives load and we were good to go.
My project manager/big boss called me on the phone to make absolutely sure that the "live news" blast would be a successful, undramatic event. Luckily we had several blast mats already on site ( you see them in the photos, partially buried. ) We used the excavator to hang a few mats on top of the big rock, and moved back to do the shot.
Blasting is a unique business, all your work comes down to pushing a button. On the other side of pushing the button...there's no going back. You can't change your mind. In a split second, you are a hero or a zero. If you are 100% successful, it's forgotten in minutes. If you fuck up, and go into the "zero" category...it's remembered forever...and is like a bad stink that follows you around.
Even though it was a low risk shot, it still was a bit tense with all the news camera pointed at us. Fortunately, the shot was a gentle "thump''...and a crumpling of rock. A non-event. All that remained, was to drag the blast mats away and let the heavy machines get to work on the clean up chores. All in all the elapsed time from slide to open road was about 7 hours ....not bad for a Super Bowl Sunday. In the aftermath of the slide, we had to just about completely re-do cut 14 to get it in back in shape and 100% stable. This involved removing a lot more rock than the contractor had bid on, but was required to make it safe for the foreseeable future.

In all likely-hood, the mechanics refusal to work on the drill, set off a chain of events and decisions that saved lives, maybe our own people, and for sure someone in the traveling public.