The California Department of Transportation recently released a video detailing how its engineers fixed washed-out section of Highway 1 near the heart of Big Sur in Monterey County in only 86 days.

[Above photo by Caltrans]

Three days of heavy rains spawned a river of mud, boulders, and fire debris on January 28 that overwhelmed a 150-foot section of the iconic Highway 1, sending it into the ocean. That mudslide closed a five-mile section of the roadway – known as the Pacific Coast Highway – at Rat Creek on Monterey County’s Big Sur Coast

The washout left a V-shaped cavity where the old fill had cradled a 66-inch culvert for Rat Creek. Caltrans noted upon competition of the repair project that the subsequent refilling of that cavity and reconstruction of the roadway atop it that the new section of highway is now strong enough to last “for centuries to come.”