Alaska’s Famous Ice Road Closed Due to Extreme Flooding

Photo Credit: international Business Times Traffic along Alaska’s famous Dalton Highway has stalled at a time when hundreds of truckers would typically be transporting critical supplies to the state’s northern oil fields. The highway known as the Ice Road in the popular History channel series “Ice Road Truckers” is the only overland route to these lucrative operations, but the Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities closed a stretch of the road this week due to extreme flooding. The road is covered by up to 2 feet of water in places and the agency expects it will remain closed for four days to a week.

Earlier this spring, the Dalton was closed for a week when overflow from the Sagavanirktok River froze on the roadway in thick layers of ice. On an average day, at least 100 truckers travel the corridor — it runs more than 400 miles from Fairbanks to Prudhoe Bay — to supply more than a dozen companies including ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and BP that operate at nearby oil fields. (Read more from “Alaska’s Famous Ice Road Closed Due to Extreme Flooding” HERE)

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