Sep 24, 2023 at 1:34 PM Update: 13 minutes ago
The Swedish E6 highway, which was destroyed by a large landslide north of Gothenburg on Saturday, is likely to be closed for months to come. It is still not known how the landslide happened.
The landslide took place on the night of Friday to Saturday near the town of Stenungsund in southern Sweden. Several cars and trucks drove into sinkholes and three people were injured. Several road users had to be rescued with a helicopter. An area of about 700 by 200 meters was affected.
Jörgen Einarsson, director of the Swedish Transport Administration, expects it will be a challenge to divert all the traffic that normally travels on the affected highway to other roads.
More than 10,000 road users use the affected section of the E6 every day, which is also important for people in southern Norway. The road is one of the main arteries between Norway, Sweden and the rest of mainland Europe. The highway starts in the south of Sweden, near Trelleborg, and runs all the way to Kirkenes, Norway, far above the Arctic Circle.
“It is still too early to say exactly how long the repair of the road will take, but it is likely many months. The work is very extensive and will have a major impact on traffic,” Einarsson told public broadcaster SVT News.
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It is still unclear how the landslide could happen
Swedish police launched an investigation into its cause after the landslide. It is being investigated, among other things, whether explosions at a nearby construction site played a role.
There is a lot of so-called fast clay in the area. This type of clay can quickly move during vibrations or large amounts of precipitation.
Exceptional amounts of rain have not fallen near the landslide in recent times, the Swedish meteorological institute SMHI reported on Sunday morning. “But if you look at the whole summer, it was especially wet in July, just like in August,” SMHI meteorologist Linnea Rehn Wittskog told SVT Hyheter.
At the beginning of August, Scandinavia received a lot of precipitation due to Storm Hans. That caused many problems in Sweden, but especially Norway.
2023-09-24 11:34:03
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