Juneau will be a boomtown today.<\/p>\n
Between 9 a.m. and noon, residents in Douglas, West Juneau, Thane Road and downtown Juneau will hear a series of explosions as the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities fires a howitzer into the avalanche zone above Thane Road.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople should be prepared for some loud booms,\u201d said Jeremy Woodrow, a spokesman for the department. \u201cIt echoes pretty well downtown.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thane Road will be closed at the avalanche gates while the blasting takes place, and traffic will be stopped. Hikers and walkers also will be blocked from accessing the howitzer\u2019s firing location, the concrete pad uphill of the Treadwell Mine cave-in.<\/p>\n
The howitzer is on permanent loan from the U.S. Army to the DOT, Woodrow said, and Thursday\u2019s firing is more about training for state employees than actual snow removal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere really isn\u2019t that much snow up top,\u201d Woodrow said. \u201cWe have to get a certain amount of shots fired every year to keep our personnel certified.\u201d<\/p>\n
Woodrow said the department doesn\u2019t expect the howitzer to create any significant avalanches or bring a significant amount of snow onto the road, but snow-removal equipment will be on standby as a precaution.<\/p>\n
Woodrow said \u201cmore than a handful\u201d of shots will be fired in the three-hour window, launched from the Treadwell Mine historic district, across Gastineau Channel and into Mount Roberts above Thane Road.<\/p>\n
Avalanche blasting isn\u2019t unusual in Juneau, but the past few winters have lacked significant snowfall, meaning it hasn\u2019t been needed at Thane recently.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Juneau will be a boomtown today. Between 9 a.m. and noon, residents in Douglas, West Juneau, Thane Road and downtown Juneau will hear a series of explosions as the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities fires a howitzer into the avalanche zone above Thane Road. \u201cPeople should be prepared for some loud booms,\u201d said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":426,"featured_media":2980,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-2979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/426"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2979"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2979\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2980"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2979"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}