The Bertha rescue pit in downtown Seattle. Tomorrow, it will be exactly a year since our expensive tunnel-boring machine stopped working.
  • Washington State Department of Transportation
  • The Bertha rescue pit in downtown Seattle. Tomorrow, it will be exactly one year since our expensive tunnel-boring machine stopped working.

Mike Lindblom at The Seattle Times has the news: "The Alaskan Way Viaduct and nearby soil have sunk 1.2 inches this fall alongside stranded tunnel machine Bertha, senior state engineers said Friday afternoon. The settling shows that the tunnel team is having trouble controlling the soil, crucial to protecting downtown as the Highway 99 tunnel project attempts to move ahead."

Sinking soil under downtown Seattle! What could possibly go wrong?

The state says the Viaduct remains safe to drive, and although some buildings in Pioneer Square have "settled" a bit this fall, none are looking like they're gonna fall apart. Phew? "This latest worry comes near the one-year anniversary of Bertha’s stall," Lindblom notes, "when the machine overheated and failed to advance Dec 6, 2013."