Strong winds Friday toppled towers that were part of the Hoover Dam bypass project, closing U.S. Highway 93 at the dam to traffic over the weekend. The highway was scheduled to reopen to traffic Monday night. Photo by Jane Kalinowsky.
U.S. Highway 93 and the Hoover Dam visitors center are expected to be open this morning, but it will be much longer before authorities have a handle on how soon a crippled dam bypass bridge project will be back on track.
"It's going to take literally weeks and possibly months to get an in-depth analysis of where the project is going," Dave Zanetell, a Federal Highway Administration engineer overseeing the project, said Monday.
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Bob McKenzie with the Nevada Department of Transportation said that traffic was expected to be allowed back on U.S. 93 at the dam by 8 p.m. Monday.
The dam was scheduled to reopen to visitors by 9 a.m. today. The road and dam have been closed to the public since Friday afternoon, when high winds knocked down two pairs of 280-foot steel crane towers on either end of Black Canyon, a quarter-mile south of the dam.
The towers carried steel cables across the gorge used as a kind of pulley crane, shuttling people and up to 50 tons of supplies at a time over the Colorado River.
"We clearly understand wind was the cause of the incident, but we don't know the exact details," Zanetell said.
No one was hurt and the dam itself was not damaged in the collapse, but debris littered U.S. 93, the only road to and from the dam.
"The site cleanup and securing the site are very near completion," Zanetell said.
Other details and estimates on cleanup and recovery work were not available Monday.
While U.S. 93 was closed, traffic was diverted via U.S. Highway 95 to state Route 163 to the Colorado River crossing at Laughlin to Arizona state Route 68 back to U.S. 93 , a detour adding 23 miles to the trip.
The highway is the primary overland link between Las Vegas and Phoenix.
Before Friday's incident, authorities had hoped to open the $234 million, four-lane bridge by the end of 2008. When the bridge opens, U.S. 93 traffic will be permanently diverted there from the two-lane dam.
When finished, the 1,905-foot span will carry traffic 890 feet over the river.
On Friday, winds in Southern Nevada were clocked as high as 51 mph, according to the National Weather Service.
