Road workers: “The reason for asphalt failures in Blagoveshchensk are heating mains, heterogeneous soil and water”

Expert opinion

Holes on the roads have become a regular occurrence for the capital of the Amur region this year. Sinkholes appeared along Lenin Street in the area of house No. 118, along Kalinina Street, Teatralnaya Street, as well as along Studencheskaya, Severnaya, and other areas of the city. However, according to the press service of the Blagoveshchensk administration: contractors treat their obligations in good faith and take the necessary measures in a timely manner.

For example, the subsidence on two sections of Teatralnaya Street in the Severnaya area has already been eliminated, said Alexander Alekseev, a representative of Asphalt JSC. For the time being, the asphalt was removed and filled with a cement-soil mixture. Until the soil completely thaws, both percops will be maintained. In mid-April, the contractor plans to enter the site and conduct a full survey to find out the exact cause of the subsidence and carry out restoration work.

“The places where the asphalt concrete was destroyed were exposed, the asphalt concrete was removed and a coating was made with a cement-soil mixture in order to give strength,” he explained. — Starting April 15, we will begin troubleshooting and opening networks. Let's see what happens to them and eliminate the reasons that caused the deformation.

At the same time, Teatralnaya Street was completely renovated back in 2019, and there were no complaints about the quality of the work performed. Experts associate the sinkholes with high water content in the soil due to the rainy summer of 2022. The specialists of Server LLC see this as the reason. Similar defects appeared on Lenin and Kalinin repaired last year. According to the general director of the organization, a road worker with many years of experience, Alexander Kharchenko, asphalt deformation occurs in places where networks pass: heterogeneous soil and high water content, and under the heating main, the temperature difference also leads to subsidence. This is also typical for streets that were repaired 5-6 or more years ago.

“It’s difficult to say the exact reason now, but usually subsidence on roads occurs due to the soils that make up the working layer of the roadbed and its moisture,” commented the chief engineer of the specialized expert organization “Azimut-Progress”, Candidate of Technical Sciences Andrey Lopashuk. — Soil heterogeneity can also cause subsidence.

Stronger, but more expensive

One of the options to avoid failures in places where networks pass is to use so-called non-subsidence soils. But this, in turn, leads to a significant increase in the cost of repair work in general.

“This year, a fairly large number of sinkholes have appeared on our roads, and I want to note not only in recently repaired areas, but also in places where there have been no such problems for several years,” noted Oleg Imameev. “We discussed the supposed causes of such phenomena with experts, but naturally, the final understanding will be based on the results of research and technical examinations. Based on the conclusions drawn, decisions will be made to prevent these failures from happening in the future.

The mayor of Blagoveshchensk emphasized that the city is located in a climatic zone where soil movement is characteristic, therefore it is impossible to guarantee one hundred percent that failures will no longer be possible. Nevertheless, the city administration, together with the customer and contractors, will work to ensure that road repair technologies minimize the risk of this situation occurring.

The repaired areas, Oleg Iameev added, are under warranty, so contractors are involved in eliminating defects within the framework of their obligations at their own expense. In other identified areas, restoration work is undertaken by the department for the repair and maintenance of urban roads of the municipal enterprise "GSTK".

Age category of materials: 18+

Alisa Letova

Filling cracks on an industrial scale

Repairing cracks on public roads in most cases involves filling with cold sealant - its use is possible even in cold weather, under conditions unsuitable for working with a bitumen mixture. A kind of benchmark used in developed countries of the world is the BORNIT sealant - Rissflex, with the help of which the same central seams are repaired in a short time.

The rapid formation of a long-shaped patch is possible thanks to a special technique that uniformly supplies the sealant and rolls it over the crack manually. Sprinkling the sealant layer with granite screenings of a fraction of 3-5 mm allows you to speed up the return of the road to operation - if you follow the technology, you can start traffic on the repaired section half an hour after the completion of the work.

The ground is disappearing from under your feet. What to do when the asphalt fails? Lawyer's advice.

Recently, cases of soil failure have become more frequent in Tula. For some, this becomes news, for others, it is a reason to go to court due to damage to property or harm to health. Lawyer Sergei Sorokin told TSN24 news agency how victims can protect their rights.

Who will compensate for the damage?

Typically, after people get over the initial shock, they ask the question: “Is the damage caused compensable, and if so, who should compensate it?” From a legal point of view, resolving the issue of compensation for damage caused by a sinkhole or a car falling into a hole is in many ways similar to compensation for damage resulting from a tree, lighting poles, etc. falling on property. Most often, responsibility lies with those who own the territory where the emergency occurred.

Help! Where should those trapped in the “dungeon” go?

Having overcome the “effect of surprise”, it is necessary to record the incident in as much detail as possible, take clear photos and videos. The photographs should show not only the damaged property with a hole or sinkhole, but also elements of the surrounding landscape that allow identification of the scene of the incident, the position of objects involved in the incident, damage caused to the property, etc. When starting video filming, be sure to indicate the date, time and place where it is produced. Then you need to call the police. If the damage was caused to a car that fell into a hole while driving, then a state traffic inspector should be called in to help.

The task of the local commissioner is to draw up a protocol for examining the scene of the incident and draw up other procedural documents. The traffic police representative must, among other things, take measurements of the resulting hole and include them in the incident diagram.

Look for witnesses

Be sure to collect contacts of eyewitnesses to the incident and enlist their support. Their testimony may be useful in court.

Assess damage immediately

After completing all the documents to record the incident, it is necessary to determine the amount of monetary compensation for the damage caused. To do this, you need to completely restore the damaged property with proper documentary evidence of the amount of costs incurred, or order a report on determining the market price of restoration repairs, drawn up by an independent appraiser.

Who is guilty?

The next stage is the most difficult - it is necessary to determine the person responsible for the area of the soil where all this happened. At the same time, you need to find out the exact reason for this.

For example, recently in the Station area of Tula, a sinkhole was formed as a result of improper performance of work by Tulagovodokanal JSC. In this case, financial responsibility lies with this enterprise, and not with the owner of the land plot where the emergency occurred.

If damage is caused to a car that falls into a hole while driving, the parameters of which exceed the maximum permissible length, width, depth provided for by GOST (there are also GOST standards for holes in Russia), then financial responsibility for this damage lies with the organization operating this section of the road and responsible for him.

Let's go to court

At the end of the path to compensation for damage, it is necessary to draw up a claim with requirements. If the culprit does not satisfy it, then a lawsuit is filed. In court, it will be necessary to prove the cause-and-effect relationship between the negligent actions and inactions of those responsible for the formation of a sinkhole or hole on the road with the resulting material damage. If the evidence is objective and convincing, the court will make a decision obliging the perpetrators to compensate for the damage received.

In general, watch your step carefully, go around and avoid road imperfections, and don’t be afraid to stand up for your rights!

Photo: Andrey Remizov, TSN24 LLC
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Regeneration method

Using anti-aging compounds, the surface of the coating is impregnated. This is not a panacea for destruction, but a preventive procedure to slow down the aging process of asphalt concrete. It prevents cracks from appearing on the road surface and crumbs from falling out. Impregnation can eliminate small defects, such as thin lines of cracks and small pockmarks. All necessary substances and materials for restoring asphalt pavement can be ordered and purchased at liquidasphalt.rf.

Impregnating mixtures must interact well with bitumen, not volatilize and be in a stable state for a long time. Foreign anti-aging impregnations are common in the form of cationic emulsions, without harmful effects on the health of people performing repair and restoration work. In post-Soviet countries, extracts of selective purification of oil particles, creosote and anthracene oils, and D1 or D2 tars are used for these purposes.

Repairing asphalt on a personal property

Private home areas rarely experience serious operational load, and their owners are usually not ready to invest large amounts of money, so the decision to repair instead of a full replacement is completely justified. Small cracks that do not pretend to be called holes can simply be covered with bitumen - this is a kind of sealant that will prevent moisture from penetrating into the cavity. Compliance with technology involves sequential passage of such stages.

Dust and debris are carefully removed from the crack. The cleaner the cavity, the better, otherwise the bitumen will not adhere to the road as such, but to loose particles that themselves do not adhere to anything. Ideally, it should also be dried so that no moisture remains inside, which gives the same effect as dust. Special blowing equipment is capable of cleaning and drying at the same time, but at the dacha the owner can only use a vacuum cleaner, and only if the cord and carrier are long enough.

Next, the crack needs to be heated - a special heat lance is used for this. The average person does not have such equipment, but any repair team should have it. Using a spear, she gently heats the crack, causing the bitumen to melt along the edges of the defect.

A heated bitumen mixture is poured into the treated defect, and this completes the repair of the house path. A modern alternative is bitumen-rubber tape. It is even used in road repairs, and for your own yard it is an ideal solution. Cleaning and drying the crack occurs similarly to the technology described above, and then the crack is coated with a bitumen primer and the mixture is allowed to dry. Finally, the tape, cut into pieces large enough to completely cover each crack, is glued to the road and rolled out with a hand roller.

Remember that cracks in asphalt do not disappear on their own - on the contrary, they tend to rapidly increase in size if not repaired, and this is a reason not to postpone the procedure. Although cracks do not interfere with safe movement and do not even create shaking, they are a direct harbinger of the formation of holes.

Why does asphalt fail?

According to statistics, every year thousands of Russian residents face the danger of falling under the asphalt. Almost always this happens in close proximity to reinforced concrete or brick sewer and water wells.

For example, at the beginning of last week, on one of the central streets of Samara, a passenger car almost completely disappeared under the asphalt. On Wednesday, a KamAZ truck loaded with asphalt concrete mixture fell on its rear wheels in the city center. The dimensions of the resulting pit were more than two meters wide and more than three meters long. On the same day, a Lada Kalina fell under the asphalt. The car's wheels went underground the moment the driver stopped at the intersection.

Special commissions, constantly created to investigate cases of collapses and ground subsidence in various cities of the Russian Federation, as a result of which cars fall under the asphalt, establish that the cause is usually a water leak from the city sewer and water supply system.

Here is the official conclusion of one of these commissions:

“According to the commission’s conclusion, the cause of the failure of the passenger car was a huge leak of water from an extremely worn-out water pipeline. It was built in 1974 and instead of the standard 25 years, it has been in service for 37 years. The cause of the accident with KamAZ was the erosion of the soil, which occurred due to a leak in the reinforced concrete well. The contractor who installed the networks was fined. At the site of the break on the road, openings were repeatedly carried out in order to repair communications: heating networks, power supply cables. As a result of the accident, the water pipeline was damaged,” the city administration said in a statement.

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