Updated 18:58 | Published at 6:36 p.m
Incorrectly placed excavation masses may be the cause of the night’s landslide at Stenungsund.
The same reason was behind a landslide on the E6 in 2006.
– In my world, it is a blunder without control and responsibility that caused this, says a person in the construction industry.
After the large landslide that destroyed parts of the E6 at the Stenungsunds mountain on the night of Saturday, several people have contacted Aftonbladet. They claim that excavated piles placed in a future business park highway caused the landslide.
The business park comprises 132,000 square meters of industrial land. On a recently taken picture of the landslide at the E6, you can clearly see that the landslide started in the upper right corner of the picture, in the business park area. The slide has since continued down the highway.
On December 20, 2006, an extensive landslide occurred on the E6 at Munkedal, five kilometers north of the night’s landslide. The Swedish Road Administration’s investigators later concluded that excavated masses from a motorway construction site next door had triggered the landslide, according to the news agency TT.
“Nothing to do with rain amounts”
Right next to the Stenungsunds motet, the construction of a business park is currently underway. The business park’s owning company has been given permission to build a noise barrier against Furufjäll’s motor stadium by Stenungsund municipality.
But instead of placing excavated material at the motor stadium and then planting forest on it, the excavated material has been placed about 300 meters away, next to the highway, according to a construction industry person familiar with the project.
– Over 50,000 tons of excavated material have been driven to the site during the summer and placed next to the highway, to get up to the same level as the mountain cliffs on the site, says the person and continues:
– It is widely known in the construction industry that this is the cause. It has nothing to do with deforestation or rainfall amounts. In my world, this is a blunder without control and responsibility. They add more and more excavated material and eventually the ground breaks. The mountain slopes so sharply, and then there’s this glacial mud, it doesn’t hold up in the end.
Facsimile of Stenungsund’s land permit in March 2023, which gives the business park the right to build a noise wall. Photo: Facsimile
The police and emergency services have established that the slide probably started during the construction of the business park, where blasting was also carried out.
In order to see if there are connections between the construction and the landslide, the police have started a preliminary investigation regarding gross devastation. The police will interview employees and staff at the company, but no one is currently suspected of crime.
Lars-Olov Westerberg, natural geographer and university lecturer at Stockholm University, cannot comment on what caused the landslide at E6. However, loading soil with excavated materials can affect its stability:
– What affects stability is the weight of the soil masses and how rich the soil is in water. If you load it with more and more material, it could certainly have affected the conditions on this slope, he says.
Aftonbladet has searched for the owners of the business park and the excavation company, but they have not been able to be reached. To the newspaper Fastighetsvärlden, the CEO of the business park comments on the incident:
– It is incredibly tragic what happened. The most important thing is that no people were seriously injured. That is the most important thing now, that it went well for all people. The investigation must show what is behind it all.