BY BEN L. KAUFMAN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Thousands of dollars of overtime later, Columbia Parkway was to be free of mudslides and open for rush hour this morning.
"We pick it up and haul it away," Joe Barkey, a Cincinnati public works supervisor, said at midday Monday. "We'll do well over 100 loads."
Heavy if sporadic rain loosened hillside soil above Columbia Parkway east of Kemper Lane on Sunday.
"We had trees hanging out over these first two lanes," Mr. Barkey said. No mud tumbled over the retaining wall onto the westbound lanes, but it was "oozing" over.
Mr. Barkey and more than a dozen colleagues set about preventing worse from happening.
They diverted all traffic and used an excavator to pull down loosened trees, which they cut up and hauled to city property on Kellogg Avenue east of Salem Avenue.
Then the excavator operator reached up and pulled down mud and rock before it slid.
He used it to build a crude ramp from the roadway over the wall and drove his excavator up the incline to the foot of the hill where he pulled down more material before it slid.
"We've got another area that might slide," Mr. Barkey said, so his crew would tear out trees for at least 100 yards west of the original scar and pull down slide-prone soil and shale as a preventive measure.
"Luckily, there is no real property damage," he said, and residents atop the incline were in no danger of sliding down in their apartments.
As he spoke, a dump truck pulled up, stopped, and a front-loader piled up to 12 cubic yards of debris into the bed.
The truck headed east on Columbia to be replaced by another, identical vehicle, in a long chain.
He was figuring out how to keep the work going if further storms hit.
If it came to that, he'd order his excavator operator to stay on the parkway and pull down as much as possible by reaching over the retaining wall with the mechanical arm and bucket.
With lightning, even slicker mud and greater hillside instability that would accompany any new storm, he did not want to risk the operator's safety.
Mr. Barkey said the Sunday-Monday cleanup involved about 15 workers at any time, each earning double pay for the holiday labor.
