Austria: A9 closed until the end of the week

The Austrian motorway operator ASFINAG has informed that on Saturday, June 8, five mudslides came down on the A9 motorway near Bösebach. In some cases, the layer of deposited mud and debris was 2 meters deep.

ASFINAG employees, firefighters and transporting companies worked around the clock using 20 trucks and 7 excavators to remove masses of earth that kept sliding down the unstable slopes, along with huge amounts of water. On Sunday, June 9, geologists and bridge engineers checked the slopes and the infrastructure and found that the rain water had also caused major damage to the motorway. Hundreds of meters of drainage systems as well as fences and protective barriers were destroyed. It is still difficult to estimate the scale of the damage. The bridge north of the Bösebach junction has also been affected: the ground around one of its pillar has been washed away by masses of water.

For safety reasons, the A9 motorway will remain closed in both directions until the end of the week. Two-way traffic on the carriageway towards Voralpenkreuz could be resumed on Friday at the earliest. However, renovation work on the carriageway towards Spielfeld will take longer. Therefore, traffic in both directions from St. Michael and Deutschfeistritz will continue to be diverted via the S6 Semmering and S35 Brucker Expressway.