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Sunrise Drive closed for to two weeks or more for repairs

Tina Giuliano

Sunrise drive

By: Tina Giuliano

Posted

UPDATE 08/25/22

Pima County officials say Sunrise Drive at the Esperero Wash between Barrasca Avenue to Via Umbrosa will be reopened Friday, Aug. 26, 2022 by 5 a.m.

Permanent repairs to the roadway will be performed later this fall after monsoon concludes. The county will release a repair schedule before additional road work begins.

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After several days of heavy rain, Sunrise Drive near the Esperero Wash is closed because the rainfall eroded the road, undermining the pavement. The erosion caused the shoulder of the road to cave in and create a hole.

For those who have lived in the area for a long time — some more than a decade — this is something they haven't seen before. Jason Brown and his sons live, work and go to school in the area. On their evening walk, they saw the extent of the damage to the road.

“I've seen lots of storms come in every year and this is the heaviest I've seen it,” Jason Brown said.

So when the rain brings running water to the wash and carves a hole into the ground, the tendency is to explore.

"We saw that a lot of the trees were gone," Jack Brown said.

Jack's brother Owen agreed that it happened so quickly.

"And we saw our trail get swept away,” he said.

A lot of the traffic in the area has to be diverted to the surrounding streets like Snyder or Sabino Canyon. Laura Gibson, a teacher at Canyon View Elementary School, said Sunrise Drive was her main route to school.

“This is my route to work everyday so I just have to find alternate routes," she said. "And the construction today was the thing that kind of threw me off again this morning.. I was thinking 'okay this is no big deal I’ll go down to Kolb, but Kolb was just packed with construction.”

She said the closure impacts a lot of the families in her school.

“We did have an announcement to hold off on our attendance this morning,” she said.

*ROAD CLOSURE* - Aug 21- Sunrise Drive is CLOSED at the Esperero Wash between Barrasca Ave. and Via Umbrosa. Traffic will be redirected to Kolb Road and Sabino Canyon Road.
— PimaCountyDOT (@PimaCountyDOT) August 22, 2022

The Pima County Department of Transportation is working on repairing this road but the department released a statement saying it will take two week or more to finish it.

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