Lewis County Sirens.com

By Sharyn  L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter

A giant oversized load on a semi truck that blocked state Route 505 to Winlock for more than four hours last week was a tunnel boring machine on its way to China, according to the Washington State Patrol.

Troopers were called about 12:45 p.m. on Friday when one of its wheels went into a ditch as it tried to make the turn to continue up North Military Road, a state patrol spokesperson said today.

Trooper Will Finn  said they had to call some folks up from Kelso to help get the big rig on its way.

Later that night, it got stuck again trying to make a corner in Centralia.

And it was stalled the night before at state Route 506 and Military Road near Vader.

Finn said he learned the load originated in Canada and traveled through Montana and Idaho trying to get to the port in Grays Harbor so it can be shipped across to Asia.

It’s just one of many trying to make the same journey, according to Finn.

“There are 16 of them, it’s the third one they’ve moved,” he  said.

He said he wasn’t actually certain if each load is an entire tunneling machine or just components, but he did know the truck, trailer and load that had so much trouble on Friday was 120 feet long and 17 feet tall.

He wasn’t sure why it didn’t choose to travel on Interstate 5, and asked about that, he said.

“I guess the company hauling it didn’t want to deal with I-5 because they didn’t want to deal with the over passes,” he said.

His understanding was each time it would come to an overpass too low to clear, it would have to exit the freeway and get back on.

Lewis County granted the travel route permit, but if it allows another one, things will be different.

“I can virtually guarantee we’re not going to go through that again,” Tim Elsea, the director of Lewis County Public Works said today.

Elsea said he doesn’t yet have all the details, but they are looking at the situation.

He described the procedure for such permits: The pilot company proposes a route and the county looks into height and weight restrictions that would prevent travel on certain roads and over certain bridges, Elsea said.

“But we don’t check if they can make all their turns,” he said.

Elsea said he followed the same protocol as usual for issuing a route permit.

The pilot company originally wanted to go a different way, but there were three bridges on Jackson Highway that aren’t authorized for anything above normal weight loads, he said.

“I will say the haulers kind of felt like we were too restrictive of them because of the bridge collapse in Skagit County,” he said. “But that’s not it at all, it was our normal process.”

Elsea said the truck managed to get through at state Route 505 by taking some of the axles off, making the turn and then putting them back on.

In Centralia at about 8:30 that night, the same giant oversized load blocked an intersection at Mellen and Yew streets, long enough for the owner of a parked car to be located to so they could be asked to move their car in order for the truck to get around a corner, according to the police department.

Finn said it’s unknown when the next 13 similar loads may attempt to travel through the area.

Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter

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