Last weekend, two roads in southeastern Missouri, as well as in several other central states, buckled due to extreme heat.

When what appeared to be a similar collapse of state Highway 82 between Mc-Quicks Grocery and the Cherokee County line south of Snake Creek, recent debilitating heat was a suspect.

But Chris Wallace, District 1 engineer for the Oklahoma Department of Transportation (ODOT), says the unusual 36 inches of rain Sequoyah County has received in the past six months is actually the culprit.

“It was more a crack in the highway that water was getting down into and saturating the sub grade. Once the sub grade saturated, the weight of the asphalt and the overlay pavement, it started to move. As soon as we saw the crack start to open, we shifted traffic away from it and then started a repair process,” Wallace says, confirming the collapse was not heat related.

The area near Snake Creek has been prone to cracks in the road in the past, and then when recent rainfall was added, “the cracks started getting a little bit bigger,” Wallace explained about the stretch where the highway is restricted to one lane and controlled by temporary traffic lights.

“When that happened, we moved traffic into one lane, and there are temporary signals out there helping traffic get back and forth. Our contractor is actually rebuilding the slope and adding some additional material to the new slope so we can rebuild that northbound lane and get it open.”

While Wallace says he hopes repairs will be completed and both lanes of traffic open by July 4, that’s not the end of the story for ODOT.

State contractors have already undertaken the task of constructing a new highway on the three-mile stretch, which will replace the existing roadway when complete in about 12 months.

“Once the new alignment is finished, traffic will no longer be using this old section of roadway. The project we’re doing, the majority of it is adjacent to the current highway alignment. There is a little bit in the middle where it [the new highway] will come back onto the existing alignment, and that section will be rebuilt. The area where the issue is occurring right now, once we complete the new alignment, traffic will no longer be using the existing highway,” Wallace explains.

“It’s really impressive what all is going on out there. There’s a lot of earthwork being moved, and we’re going to have a much better highway once we’re through.”