Big Sur Highway Collapse: A large chunk of California Highway 1 was destroyed by destruction

California Department of Transportation officials (Caltrans) said in a statement on Friday that a stream of debris from the hillside above the highway “overloaded the drainage infrastructure, flowed down the highway and eroded the road, resulting in the complete loss of a segment of Highway 1 “at Rat Creek, about 15 miles south of Big Sur, a mountainous stretch of the central coast of the state.

California Highway Patrol Officer John Yerace said he was in the area on Thursday at about 4 pm when he realized that “this stretch of road, specifically the southern runway, fell into the ocean.”

Caltrans teams discovered the flow of debris on Thursday and issued an emergency contract to Papich Construction in San Luis Obispo County to assist with the repair. Early Friday morning, Caltrans teams and emergency contractors arrived on the scene and found that “both lanes on the highway were destroyed”.

The damage assessment team will continue to work over the weekend, Caltrans said. It is unclear how long the repair can take and the road will remain closed in the meantime.

Officer Yerace said that upon discovering the destroyed road, he remained in place to keep drivers safe until he was released. He came back later.

“Sometime during the night, before 6:30 am this morning, we responded back to the scene with the help of Caltrans’ access and realized that the road no longer exists,” he said.

The area where the road collapsed is about a kilometer south of the burn scar left by the Dolan fire, one of the forest fires that devastated the state last summer, Caltrans said.

Another stretch of Highway 1 was reopened in July 2018, after a major landslide in May 2017, accumulating tons of stones on a 400-meter stretch of the highway, making it impassable and adding 13 acres to the coast.

California Governor Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties in response to winter storms that “threatened to cause mud and debris flows”, forcing the evacuation of thousands of residents, according to the statement.

At least 25 structures in Northern California were damaged as a result of landslides and debris flow caused by a powerful river-driven atmospheric storm. Most of the impacted areas are where scars from burns from previous forest fires exist.

CNN’s Alexandra Meeks and Sarah Moon contributed to this report.