A section of Freeport Road in Springdale Township closed Friday because of a landslide could potentially stay shut down until Monday as officials worry more debris could fall.
PennDOT spokesman Steve Cowan said the slide, reported to PennDOT about 7 a.m., closed Freeport Road between the New Kensington Bridge and Riddle Run Road.
Freeport Road is a state road. About 11,000 vehicles use that section of road daily.
“There’s still material coming down,” Cowan said Friday morning. “We’ll closely monitor it, and then, once they feel it’s safe to re-open, they’ll send out the crews to clean up.”
No one was injured in the slide and no utilities were impacted.
It did, however, force Dave and Lisa Speer, the owners of David’s Diner, to close the restaurant. The diner is about a three-minute walk from the slide, which is near Zaleski’s Aluminum and Vinyl Outlet.
It’s the same area that partially closed Freeport Road when trees fell across most of the road late Feb. 14.
Dave Speer said he noticed police lights when he pulled into work about 6 a.m. Friday.
“All the traffic was backing up like crazy. Everybody was turning around,” he said. “Once that cleared up, I went down to check it out. It actually started with one tree, and it just kept on coming down. That’s what the police officer told me.
“You could just see it just coming from the hillside, coming down. You could hear and see it sliding.”
The couple said Friday is one of their busiest days.
“This is really going to hurt,” Lisa Speer said.
“We’ll come back in tomorrow morning and re-open again as usual and see what happens,” Dave Speer said. “That’s all we can do.”
Lori Musto, a senior highway maintenance manager for PennDOT, said there are rock ledges with debris on top of them in the slide area. Officials are worried wind and rain that’s forecast for this weekend will knock that material down.
“With the rain coming (Saturday) our thought was let whatever comes down come down and get it cleaned up this weekend,” Musto said. “We’ll have people watching it all weekend.”
