This California highway is a lifeline, and deadly. Can it be fixed before it falls into the sea?

Delnot County, California – In March 1972, Kurt Stremberg’s parents gave his home in his dawn town of Klamath, about 20 miles on Highway 101, at his friend’s home.

Strongberg, 24, and his friends were going to drive to San Francisco by car, truck, fly to Europe, and see the world.

His parents, Edwin and Aili Stremberg, said quickly and began driving home. That’s still dark. And it rains.

Within minutes, the son was evacuated, part of a part of a landslide on the highway – the ominous name named the Last Chance Level – collapsed. The Strembergs’ Ford sedan crossed the cliff and killed them.

For decades, residents of California’s remote Northwest corner have been pleading with government officials about last chance level, an erosion, three-mile highway extension, embracing the misty cliffs between the Redwood Forest and the Pacific Ocean.

This is a critical channel – the only viable route to connect Crescent City, Tsunami – Perishable Town Of the 6,200 people, there are neighboring Humboldt County and other parts of the state.

But 53 years after Strembergs’ death, the road in this lane remains dangerous. Perched on four active landslides, its sidewalks twisted and ruptured by continuous land movement, the final level of opportunity is so unstable that it is reduced to one-way traffic Nine consecutive yearsreopened in October 2023. Last week, it dropped to one lane again.

“You look at the kind of problem we’ve had over the years and you think there’s going to be some kind of action,” said Strongberg, a 77-year-old real estate agent. “As long as the driveways are lanes can be kept open. We need solutions to this forever problem.”

Now, after decades of repairing holes and fixed walls of buildings (with temporary repairs costing more than $125 million since 1997), the California Department of Transportation has addressed a long-term solution: a 6,000-foot tunnel through Redwood that bypasses the last chance level of redwood Quickly decorated cliff.

It will become California’s longest highway tunnel, far exceeding the 4,233-foot Wawona Tunnel in Yosemite National Park, built in 1933. Between 100 and 400 feet below the ground, it will be designed to absorb and dissipate the land movement of the southern entrance.

The last chance-level tunnel will cost $2.1 billion – Galtrand and elected officials say they are still working to figure it out How to fund.

After years of debate Many alternatives – Including maintaining the last chance level, improving it inland, and using dehydration wells to slow down the landslide – Caltrans settled in an expensive tunnel plan last year.

If funds can be pieced together, construction is expected to begin as early as 2030 and the tunnel may open in 2038.

This summer, the California Transportation Commission allocated $40 million to formally launch the design phase of the project. California Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire, representing Democrats on the North Coast, Already called Funding is a “main milestone” pointing to $50 million Already invested In environmental reviews.

But, McGuire said, the process took too long.

“Honestly, if the Bay Area or Los Angeles has been stuck in the largest highway in the Pacific, then this problem would have been resolved a long time ago,” McGuire said in a statement to the Times. “The Last Level of Opportunity and Highway 101 are not only a road, but a lifeline. Every time the cargo, every visitor to Redwood, every emergency response depends on reliable access through this critical corridor.”

Residents and elected officials say despite the region’s distant and economic frustration, efforts are still being made to attract attention to the last-distance level.

Del Norte County has only 27,000 people. The median household income was $66,780, accounting for only 70% of the national median $96,334.

The industry that once defined the location, logging and fishing, either collapsed or Struggling. And there isn’t much room for growth, because more than 80% of the county is state or federally controlled, mainly parks, national forests or wildlife reserves.

Caltrans research in 2018 Summarize The last chance level of the emergency year will destroy the region, resulting in up to 3,800 jobs and $456 million losing the local economy.

Here, residents and elected officials say it is difficult to compete with critical infrastructure projects in wealthier, higher population places, such as the Palos Vedes Peninsula, where ground movement has shifted Palos Verdes drives south Entering the asphalt roller coaster Near President Trump’s golf courseand the coastal areas of Monterey County, where the landslide is retained on the tourist highway 1 near Big Sur More than two years.

“We are so rural here, we tend to be forgotten,” said Valerie Starkey, Del Nott County Supervisor.

Highway 101 is the only viable path between Crescent City and Klamas, with a population of around 800. When the last chance level is closed, the only option (except for the steep, unpaved logging road) is the 449 miles, eight-hour detour Circle Reading and Southern Oregon.

Many of Klamath’s children attend Crescent City and rely on free meals on campus. So when rocks and mud buried the last chance level in February 2021, Starkey said school staff dragged lunch to the bottom of the landslide and handed them over to the Caltrans crew to take it to the kids on the other side.

She added that Klamas residents had to cross the access to the small hospital in Crescent City, and residents there used it to get specialized medical services, including chemotherapy and opioid addiction treatments, more than 80 miles south of Humboldt County.

Starkey said the $2.1 billion price of the tunnel is daunting, but in the long run, we just hope it is a better choice financially”.

Speaker for U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) – A summary of last chance level stakeholder groups composed of local agencies, indigenous tribes, businesses and environmental groups Ten years ago – He said he hopes to get some federal funding through the U.S. Department of Transportation Large grant program For major, complex projects.

However, the prospect of the Trump administration supporting the project is uncertain at best. President and Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom appears to be locked Endless political struggleTrump has tried to return funds to obtain the more high-profile California transportation program, Including its high-speed rail project.

The last chance level was built in 1894 through dense mahogany forests, which was built between 1933 and 1937. Project feasibility study Delegated by Caltrans. Another route to the East was considered, but it was down due to costs and state park resources.

Since the 1930s, part of the Last Chance Level has moved 40 feet horizontally and 30 feet vertically. He said the movement has accelerated over the past decade, and some parts of the road now move a few feet toward the sea every year.

“We’ve run out of real estate,” Matteoli said. “Whether you believe in climate change or not, this situation is getting worse, coastal erosion and landslide.”

Over the past three decades, crew members have built more than twenty retaining walls to support the road, he said. But these people have also changed, breaking and breaking, requiring their own continuous repairs.

With Matteoli driving last week’s curve of last chance level, construction workers appeared in the thick fog like ghosts thrown in neon lights. He said their job could be dangerous. Three workers were seriously injured when a tree hit a hillside during a 2021 landslide, including a Caltrans engineer who lost his foot.

The expressway runs through Redwood National and State Parks, a designated location for UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Matteoli said the construction of the tunnel would result in 16 old growing mahogany trees wide, among other trees.

Steve Mietz, president and CEO of Redwoods League, a century-old conservation group, said cutting any such tree is a loss. But he said in an email that the tunnel was “one of the environmentally harmful options for the last level of opportunity”.

Harlan Watkins, who helped manage the battery-point beacon in Crescent City, said he believes the area could be a boon for the area, especially if the state hires locals to help build it and provide much-needed work.

As a volunteer with the former Beibei County Sheriff’s search and rescue team, Watkins, 69, took many people out of the last level of opportunity.

His first rescue was in the early 1990s – an older man who drove drunk, peed, walked out of the car and fell on a cliff. Watkins descended along the slope with ropes and seat belts, found the man who cut his nose and forgot to pull his pants back-but otherwise it was fine.

“It’s a dangerous road,” Watkins said. “But if this road goes, the town will dry out quickly.”

Stremberg did eventually go to Europe. It includes a place to stay in Finland – his late parents immigrated to the country while he was a toddler. After he returned, he just wanted to avoid the last chance score. But “when you have to drive all the time, it’s hard to ignore it,” he said.

He said his own adult son, the principal of an elementary school in Klamas, drove to and from his home in Crescent City for several years.

“I always feel bad about him driving every day, but there is no choice,” Strongberg said.

Strongberg, who supports the tunnel, said most people in the town feel relieved that long-term repairs have momentum, although they are frustrated that the building is still years away. Even in this faraway place, disasters forced construction to be faster, he said.

In December 1964, when Stremberg was in high school, a major flood swept through Highway 101 on the Klamath River, as well as the town of the same name.

At the time, Stremberg was on the basketball team in Crescent City. With the bridge, the boys took a bus to the river, boarded the jet boat, and encountered another bus on the other side of the water to reach the rival’s rival gymnasium.

“They rebuilt the bridge in a year,” Stremberg said. The last chance level, “It’s very frustrating because you look at it and then go,’ [considered] A real problem that can be done faster. “transparent