Waiting for the adobes to dry…

I followed with great interest a story out of California earlier this month about a fire that had severely damaged an overpass on Interstate 10 in Los Angles.

Initial analysis by naysayers said it could be weeks or maybe months to get the heavily traveled section of one of America’s most important east-west routes repaired. But recognizing the importance of the highway link, can-do California Caltrans workers had the section of road back in operation in about a week.

I recall a similar story from back East in which a section of a major north-south Interstate had been damaged. Again, initial estimates by pessimists were that the road could be closed for months to repair. Yet, when officials recognized the gravity of the situation, traffic was given a quickly re-worked alternate route and permanent repair work may already be done.

In our Land of Manana, things don’t move that quickly.

In early July, a truck smacked into an overpass linking Interstate 10 with northbound Interstate 25 on the southeast side of Las Cruces. The truck, carrying some kind of fuel, then dumped the flammable liquid on the roadway and created a major conflaguration on the roadway and next to the buttress supporting the flyover.

So here we are five months later, and the repair work still hasn’t been completed. This is not part of a dirt county road near Chamberino, this is a major east-west Interstate and the major north-south Interstate through the West.

To add insult to injury, the lack of the link has not been well communicated to drivers on east-bound Interstate 10 who join I-10 at the South Main exit. By the time you get to the warning sign that the exit is no longer available, it’s too late. At that point the only option is to drive south by about 5 miles and do a loop around at the Mesquite exit — an annoying 10 mile “detour” that I’m sure had many drivers spewing expletives at the experience.

I became so annoyed with the lack of progress that I wrote e-mails to the New Mexico Department of Transportation, including the District Engineer for this part of the state. I learned that we do not currently have a member of the Transportation Commission representing this part of the state — the position apparently has been vacant for some time.

I got responses, but of course it was the usual:

“It’s a very complicated project and we’ve moving ahead as fast as we can, blah blah blah blah.”

There were newer responses by the Department of Transportation posted on an El Paso TV station’s website. Among things reported:

“The environmental cleanup took longer than expected” (interpretation — we ran out of Dawn dishwasher soap).

“We ended up having to get somebody on contract to do the repairs. (Well, um — isn’t repairing highways one of the main jobs of the Department of Transportation?)

“The problem was… getting the materials to us.” (interpretation — the burro cart with a load of cement was held up by banditos near Spaceport America.)

I can virtually assure you that if this damaged overpass had been in Albuquerque or Santa Fe, the repair project would have been completed months ago. But here in southern New Mexico, the true land of manana, we’ ve become accustomed to things moving very slowly.

I suspect the original construction was done with adobe bricks, bailing wire, duct tape and straw. I think the adobe for the repair project is still curing in the sun while we await the appointment of a new commissioner for our district, who I am SURE will speed this project along.