I-24 Mudslide Is Still Treacherous As Crews Begin Clearing Debris

Crews have begun cleaning up the mudslide that’s closed a section of Interstate 24 on the north side of Nashville. But the Department of Transportation estimates that it could be a week or more before the road reopens.

Engineers say conditions on the slope are still treacherous, according to TDOT’s chief engineer, Paul Degges.

“Up on top, it’s still very, very wet — a lot of water, a lot of material still moving. But in daylight this morning, they were able to start activity,” he told reporters Monday.

About 50,000 cubic yards of earth and rock fell in the slide, Degges said, enough to fill about 3,500 dump trucks. But it fell from a high, steep, tree-filled hillside, limiting how much equipment the private company hired to lead the cleanup, Jones Brothers Contracting, can safely put into the effort.

“We can’t put 50 bulldozers up there. There’s just not enough room,” he said. “So we’re constrained by the size of the area and by the safety issues. We don’t want more material to fail and somebody get hurt up there.”

Traffic is being diverted around the mudslide, which covers the inbound side of I-24 between Old Hickory Boulevard and Briley Parkway. Degges says backups on the interstate have stretched as far as three miles, and state officials are working with their counterparts in Kentucky to encourage truckers to find alternate routes.

Degges says the inclement weather led to more than 130 incidents that closed roads statewide. I-24 was not even the largest landslide: Two in East Tennessee were significantly larger.

“Rock falls and slides are routine for us this time of year,” Degges said.

But most of the time, he said, they don’t happen on the interstate.