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Road closure: Keeping California’s scenic Highway 1 open
On the California coast where the mountains cascade into the sea, a ribbon of road rides down the edge of the continent. Driving on Highway 1 is a singular experience, and this winding 70-mile stretch hugging the steep coastline of Big Sur is why bucket lists exist.
For tourists like Linda Carroll, of St. Paul, Minnesota, the feeling from driving Highway 1 is divine. “I think it’s phenomenal,” she said. “If you didn’t believe in God and you were down here, you definitely would have to, because it’s just spectacular.”
Henry Miller helped put the area on the map in the 1950s, writing in his memoir, “Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch,” “This is the California that men dreamed of years ago. … This is the face of the earth as the Creator intended it to look.”
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Kirk Gafill has spent his life on the bluffs of Big Sur, where he runs Nepenthe restaurant. Gafill’s grandparents first moved here in 1947 after Hollywood royalty moved out. They bought the property from Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles (who had purchased it a couple years prior on their honeymoon trip and then got divorced), and decided to build a restaurant. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton filmed scenes at Nepenthe for 1965’s “The Sandpiper.”
But the true star of the show around here has always been Highway 1, opened in 1937 in a burst of optimism at the end the Great Depression. Gafill said of Highway 1, “It is the part of Big Sur that is fundamental to living here, to having a business here. And so, access is everything.”
And right now there are signs of trouble in paradise, with the road closed just south of Gafill’s restaurant. “It represents about a 30% to 35% drop in business levels,” he said. “We know these closures are going to happen. it’s just a matter of when, not if. It’s almost become an annualized event.”
Fierce storms from two back-to-back wet winters have battered the Santa Lucia Mountains, causing landslides that have buried and broken the road in four places.
Caltrans District 5 via AP
Magnus Toren, who runs the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sure, said, “When the bridge fell north of here and we had a big landslide to the south, we lived in what we call the island. So, we were essentially closed off.”
Toren lives just a few miles from where Highway 1 comes to an abrupt end – closed to the south for nearly two years. Asked if he is concerned that the situation will become more precarious in the future, Toren replied, “Of course. I mean, who wouldn’t be? I’ve asked the question, can we continue to keep this highway open forever when it gets so assaulted by landslides and also fires?”
Scientists say climate change is fueling more frequent and intense wildfires, and more powerful winter storms, a potent mix that increases the risk of landslides in an area already prone to them.
In the past five years, California has spent nearly $230 million repairing just this stretch of Highway 1.
Gabrielle Lurie/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images
“That is real money, absolutely, but it’s an important roadway for California,” said Tony Tavares, director of California’s Department of Transportation. “Climate change is something that I think nationally we talk about in the distant future. Here in California, we’re experiencing it every day.”
Further up the coast, erosion forced Caltrans to move sections of Highway 1 four hundred feet inland. But along Big Sur, with mountains on one side and the Pacific on the other, there’s nowhere to go.
Tavares said the DOT is doing its best to keep Highway 1 open: “We believe it’s possible. I can tell you right now we’re not abandoning this roadway.”
Tracy asked, “Is Highway 1 simply too big to fail?”
“I would say it is too important to fail, absolutely,” Tavares replied.
And while there are certainly easier places to live, Magnus Toren says there are none more beautiful.
Tracy said, “For so many of us who come through here on a road trip, this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing; this is your everyday.”
“It is, yeah,” said Toren. “I sometimes pinch myself and think, how could I have been so lucky? Yeah, so I’m very grateful.”
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Story produced by John Goodwin. Editor: Ben McCormick.
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Head of Russia’s nuclear defense forces killed in Moscow blast triggered by device hidden in scooter, officials say
Moscow — The head of Russia’s Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Forces, Lt. General Igor Kirillov, was killed along with his deputy early Tuesday in an explosion in Moscow, Russia’s Investigative Committee said.
An explosive device hidden in an electronic scooter went off outside a residential building as the two men left the structure, Agence France-Presse cites investigators as saying.
ALEXANDER NEMENOV / AFP via Getty Images
“Investigators, forensic experts and operational services are working at the scene,” committee spokesperson Svetlana Petrenko said in a statement. “Investigative and search activities are being carried out to establish all the circumstances around this crime.”
ALEXANDER NEMENOV / AFP via Getty Images
The committee carries out responsible major investigations in Russia.
Kirillov was sentenced in absentia by a Ukrainian court on Dec. 16 for the use of banned chemical weapons in Ukraine during Russia’s military operation in Ukraine that started in Feb. 2022.
AFPTV / AFP via Getty Images
Ukraine’s Security Service, the SBU, said it had recorded more than 4,800 uses of chemical weapons on the battlefield since February 2022, particularly K-1 combat grenades.
During the almost 3-year operation, Russia has made small but steady territorial gains to the nearly one-fifth of Ukraine it already controls.
Kirillov had been in his post since 2017, AFP notes.
A powerful earthquake hit the Pacific island nation of Vanuatu Tuesday, smashing buildings in the capital, Port Vila, including one housing the embassies of the U.S. and other nations. A witness told Agence France-Presse of bodies seen in the city.
Dan McGarry, a journalist with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project based in Vanuatu, told the Reuters news agency in an interview that police said at least one person had been killed and injured people had been taken to hospital.
“It was the most violent earthquake I’ve experienced in my 21 years living in Vanuatu and in the Pacific Islands. I’ve seen a lot of large earthquakes, never one like this,” he said.
The 7.3-magnitude quake struck at a depth of 35 miles, off the coast of Efate, Vanuatu’s main island, at 12:47 p.m. local time, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
The ground floor of a building housing the U.S, French and other embassies had been crushed under higher floors, resident Michael Thompson told AFP by satellite phone after posting images of the destruction on social media.
“That no longer exists. It is just completely flat. The top three floors are still holding but they have dropped,” Thompson said.
“If there was anyone in there at the time, then they’re gone.”
Thompson said the ground floor housed the U.S. embassy, but that couldn’t be immediately confirmed.
A photo showed significant damage to the building:
STR / AFP via Getty Images
The United States has closed the embassy until further notice, citing “considerable damage” to the mission, the U.S. embassy in Papua New Guinea said in a message on social media. “Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this earthquake,” the embassy said.
The New Zealand High Commission, housed in the same building, suffered “significant damage,” a statement from Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ office said, adding that, “New Zealand is deeply concerned about the significant earthquake in Vanuatu, and the damage it has caused.”
Thompson, who runs a zipline adventure business in Vanuatu, said, “There’s people in the buildings in town. There were bodies there when we walked past.”
A landslide on one road had covered a bus, he said, “so there’s obviously some deaths there.”
The quake also collapsed at least two bridges, and most mobile networks were cut off, Thompson said.
“They’re just cracking on with a rescue operation. The support we need from overseas is medical evacuation and skilled rescue, (the) kind(s) of people that can operate in earthquakes,” he said.
STR / AFP via Getty Images
Video footage posted by Thompson and verified by AFP showed uniformed rescuers and emergency vehicles working on a building where an external roof had collapsed onto a number of parked cars and trucks.
The streets of the city were strewn with broken glass and other debris from damaged buildings, the footage showed.
Nibhay Nand, a Sydney-based pharmacist with businesses across the South Pacific, said he had spoken to staff in Port Vila who said most of the store there had been “destroyed” and that other buildings nearby had “collapsed.”
“We are waiting for everyone to get online to know how devastating and traumatic this will be,” Nand told AFP.
A tsunami warning was issued after the quake, with waves of up to three feet forecast for some areas of Vanuatu, but it was soon lifted by the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.
Earthquakes are common in Vanuatu, a low-lying archipelago of 320,000 people that straddles the seismic Ring of Fire, an arc of intense tectonic activity that stretches through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific Basin.
Vanuatu is ranked as one of the countries most susceptible to natural disasters such as earthquakes, storm damage, flooding and tsunamis, according to the annual World Risk Report.
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