The new Athens-Korinth Highway at Kakiia Skala was closed after a major rockfall early Thursday morning (1/12). Thousands of cars lined up on the bypass road.
The landslide occurred in the early morning, at 48.5 kilometers of the highway after the second tunnel at Kakija Skala, as a result of which traffic towards Athens was redirected to the old Athens-Korinth highway, where huge traffic jams instantly formed. By 13:00, traffic was restored in one lane.
It is not known when the National Highway will open. Olympia Odos states in an update that the road landslide recovery schedule is not clear: “The stoppage of traffic from the Kineta junction (52.5 km) to the Megara junction (38.6 km) in the direction of Athens was carried out from 7.00 in the morning by order of the Department Engineers and climbers are at the scene of the incident, who carry out the necessary work with the help of a drone, visually monitoring the condition of the stone fences. Then the damaged pavement will be dismantled and restored. The timing of the operation is estimated impossible.
Explanation: the most time-consuming and difficult part of the operation is the inspection and recording of the incident, since we must, before removing pieces of rock from the roadway, have all the material that will allow us to study the phenomenon and direct the stages of recovery. Simply put, the easiest part is to remove rocks from the road. But then we will not know from which point it broke away, which route it followed, and, therefore, we will not know where and how we will have to intervene to prevent this in the future.
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