The only paved, and most popular, route to Barbeau businesses along the St. Marys River was shut down Thursday evening and remains so today.
Chippewa County Road Commission workers on scene today told SooLeader that the combination of an aging culvert and high water flow through it crumbled a small part of 15 Mile Road between Riverside and Scenic Drive just before 8 p.m.
Crews spent the day working on clearing out the old culvert, reducing water flow through that area, and installing a new culvert.
They hope the road will reopen this evening or Saturday morning.
Marian Miller, who lives on Neebish Island, was westbound on 15 Mile Road when she crested a hill less that a quarter-mile from the collapsed road and saw a man in the road waving at her to stop.
With the evening sun setting, it was hard for her to see what was going on.
"That sun was right in my face," Miller said. "When I came off that hill, that's all I could see was the sun. It was blinding."
"I could see a vehicle stopped and thought what was going on. I saw another guy in the oncoming lane waving his arms like crazy to get me to stop. If he was not there waving at me, I would not have stopped and crashed into the hole," she added.
Miller stayed at that spot on the east side of the collapse for a couple of hours to stop traffic.
An official from the Road Commission showed up at that time.
John Payment from the Chippewa County Road Commission was at the site today along with about a half dozen workers.
He said that they try to examine the culverts in the county as much as they can before something like this happens.
This culvert was outdated and rusted and that, along with the rushing water from the snowmelt, was just too much for it to handle.
"We try to keep up with the bad ones and replace any that are going bad," Payment said. "We can tell by the road sinking or if there are potholes in the road by the culvert that might be washing out ... We try to get ahead of it but there are a lot of culverts."
An emergency repair like this takes away from other responsibilities that were scheduled for today, but it has to be done.
"It's a main road to Barbeau so we definitely want to get it fixed as soon as possible," added Payment.
"Today is a day where we would grade some of the roads to get them in better condition. They are still rough and soft."
Road updates can be found here.
