An act of god greater than last month's Pineapple?

Highway 35 on Mt Hood is opening this Saturday, December 9th, at 5am. I know I should be posting this in the road conditions forum, but this is such a surprise, I thought I'd post it here. Almost everyone thought it'd be months, at best, before the highway opened.

The damage was this:
"A massive debris flow and sudden changes to the paths of several rivers on the east side of Mt. Hood severely damaged Oregon 35. About 2.5 miles of the road are washed out, undercut and/or covered by massive boulders (some larger than pickup trucks) and mud. An estimated one million cubic yards of material—mud, trees and boulders—washed down the mountainside."
www.oregon.gov/ODOT/COMM/Oregon_35.shtml

Here's photos of the initial damage.

Mt Hood Meadows is celebrating by having a "Glacial Outburst party" December 16th - 17th. Here’s the logo for the party:


And Dave Riley’s Blog

Can we send these guys to Paradise now?

So by act of god, do you mean to say '$10-$20 million-dollar bailout by ODOT?' (I'm not trying to imply that anything is wrong with that--seems fair enough to me.)

So by act of god, do you mean to say '$10-$20 million-dollar bailout by ODOT?'  (I'm not trying to imply that anything is wrong with that--seems fair enough to me.)

I could be wrong, but I thought the immediate repairs were being done with emergency federal funding, not state.

Actually don't mind my jab, I just was just reading that off a dated oregonian article. :-[ The truth is, the notion of Riley losing money on this was sort of comforting to someone who doesn't want to see any overdevelopment plans come to fruition.

But good thing people will get to use their non-refundable season passes now!