CORTEZ, Colo. (AP) — Workers have blasted apart a house-sized boulder that crashed onto and shut down a southwestern Colorado highway linking Durango and Ouray.
The Colorado Department of Transportation says trucks are hauling away fragments of the 1,150-ton (1,047-metric ton) rock from state Highway 145 while workers build a temporary bypass.
That bypass could open Tuesday or Wednesday.
The Cortez Journal reports workers drilled 15-foot-deep holes into the rock to insert explosives before blasting it apart on Sunday.
That was done after workers checked the stability of a ridgeline 1,000 feet above (305 meters) from where that boulder and another fell on Friday.
The second boulder crashed across the road, creating an eight-foot trench. No one was hurt.
