At seventy on Tuesday morning, Terje Nondal drove along Sørfjorden in Hardanger. On the way out of the Oksla tunnel north of Tyssedal, the truck driver met a wall with white smoke. Nondal first thought it was a fire he encountered. – It was not a typical day for landslides, he said. As he got out of the truck, he saw huge rocks coming out of the smoke. – Then it went cold down my back, says Nondal. The driver is well known on the route. He knows that on rainy days there can be a risk of landslides. – I am used to landslides, but have never been so close before. I do not want to be that either, he says. Therefore, he tends to plan a little differently when he is going to drive in the autumn. – One is obviously never safe. This incident is a good example of this, he says. There is a lot of traffic on the national road. The day before, 3284 cars passed the city. – It is a shame that we should have such roads, especially considering the traffic that is here, says Nondal. Unusual with larger landslides in the summer In Hardanger, landslides and landslides have been part of the landscape development. However, larger landslides are not common in the summer. This is explained by Jostein Bakke, professor of geology at the University of Bergen. – Most of the weathering takes place in winter, autumn and spring, when there are fluctuations around zero degrees, he says. This summer it has rained especially hard. According to the professor, this can lead to more landslides. – The natural processes happen faster when we have periods with a lot of rain that we have now, says Bakke. Jostein Bakke is professor of geology at UiB. He himself comes from Hardanger. Photo: Oddgeir Øystese Tear down the fence and car guard The landslide from around 470 meters high tore down the fence and the guardrail on the lower side of the road. Now the guardrail has been replaced with an intermediate solution. The fence cost 2000 kilojoules. – It completely collapsed, says construction owner Rolf Anders Tønder Svensson in the Norwegian Public Roads Administration. He states that it will be considered to set up a more powerful catch fence, for example one that tolerates at least 5000 kilojoules. – We did not set up a similar fence after something like this has happened. I estimate that the fence alone will cost six to eight million kroner. It is not off the shelf, says Svensson. The landslide took with it both the avalanche protection and the car protection on the RV. 13. Photo: West police district Shall consider re-prioritizing security work – This is a big landslide, even by Hardanger standards, says Christian Altmann, communications manager at Nye Veier. They have been given the responsibility of upgrading the RV. 13 from Skare in Ullensvang to Sogndal in the years to come, and will start the work of looking for a contractor this autumn. Much of the upgrade work that is to be done is landslide protection. But it was not this city they had planned to start work on. – It is not at the top of our list. But we will get someone with geotechnical expertise to assess the landslide city, so that we can make some decisions after the holiday, says Altmann.
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