A83 at Rest and be Thankful: Witness tells of lucky escape in landslip

Kiera Smith, 19, and mum Fiona, 44 from Campbeltown were travelling on the road on Saturday morning when their car hit by two landslips.

A passing police officer attempted to help them both but could only scream “run” when the landslide came towards them and swept their Vauxhall Zafira into a ravine. 

Road maintenance workers closed the crucial Highland's artery which is vulnerable to landslides on Friday evening.

When the crucial Highland's artery is shut, motorists are sent onto a single track route, the Old Military Road (OMR), which runs through the centre of Glen Croe and acts as a diversion using a convoy system.

The A83 at Butterbridge two miles north of the Rest and Be Thankful.

Saturday's events mark the first major landslips since two brought about by rain blocked the road three years ago bringing the state of the road into the spotlight.

It has had to be shut periodically ever since.

READ MORE: A83 at Rest and be Thankful to shut over landslip fears

Ten people have been airlifted to safety after torrential rain caused multiple landslides on the A83 between Tarbet and Lochgilphead and on the A815 in Argyll and Bute.

The A83 is now also completely closed between Tarbet and Lochgilphead.

BEAR Scotland said road closures are also in place between Inverarary and Tarbet due to landslides both sides of Dunoon junction. 

Inspections are due to take place on Sunday while clean-up operations are expected. 

BEAR Scotland had said that decisions taken to close the road on Friday were the result of continuing forecasts of rain and "high hillside saturation levels".

The road had been expected to be out of action from 7pm on Friday to the end of Sunday, subject to outcomes of hillside inspections.

Now BEAR Scotland has confirmed that the road has once again been subject to landslides.  

Some fear that if the landslips hit the Rest, that it could be out of action for a longer period of time.

One witness Kiera Smith said she was in her family car with her mother heading along the Old Military Road  while trying to get to Ayr when they got stuck on a rock or stick hidden in the water. 

She said two minutes later a landslide hit their car close to the Rest.  They thought the car would be okay to drive before a second landslide took the car over the edge and down into a ditch.

"We are okay and we’re the only ones affected by this," she said on social media.  "Certain three landslides happened around us, two of which hit the car."

She said they were "lucky" that a  police officer managed to scream at them in time to "get us out the car and get out the way too whilst warning the cars around us as well."

She said a lorry driver helped "get us to safety" and added: "Thank you for taking us under your wing and getting us where we are now."

"So I would strongly advise you do not travel at all today or the next few days till it has been cleared," she said.

Ms Smith's mother Fiona added: "It was my car, the road was passable...  but the landslide just came down in seconds.... I wouldn’t choose to drive through the amount of mud and fencing that came down."

A BEAR spokesman said: "We are working as part of the Argyll and Bute Resilience Partnership to assess road closures and incidents in the area.

"This is an evolving situation, and our BEAR Teams are on site attending landslide locations, but it is currently not safe to commence any clean-up operations."

The A83 is an almost 100-mile trunk road connecting the Mull of Kintyre and southern Argyll to the shores of Loch Lomond.

About 1.3 million vehicles travel the route every year and it acts as an important transport link for mainland Argyll as well as the Inner Hebrides.

Campaigners have long called for a full public inquiry to determine why the road is still not fixed to protect the route from landslides and have previously demanded past transport minister Jenny Gilruth to intervene to provide a shorter term solution.

There have been concerns ministers have wasted over £80m over more than a decade on failed solutions to the landslide issue.

Concerns have been raised about the millions spent on temporary solutions to the landslip problem that which were first highlighted in the Scottish Road Network Landslides Study part authored by then Scottish Executive - 18 years ago.

It comes amid widespread flooding and disruption across the country as Scots are urged not to travel unless necessary during the Met Office amber weather warning.

BEAR Scotland said the usual diversion via A819/A85/A82 at A85 Dalmally is also currently closed due to flooding.

The contractor said that the route from Gourock to Dunoon using Western Ferries is currently available.

In January, 2020, the A83 at the Rest was closed for two days after being covered by 1,300 tonnes of debris - leading to pleas for the road to be rerouted.

Seven months later on August 4, some 6,000 tonnes of debris cascaded onto the A83 at the Rest and be Thankful.

By the end of that month, the road had been closed for the same length of time as over the five years between January 2007 and October, 2012 which lead to an investigation into how to handle the hillside stability.

In 2020 alone it was shut for over 200 days.

After years of deliberation, ministers said in June that they were planning the construction of a mile-long 'landslip shelter' costing £470m to resolve the issues with landslips.

The construction of the debris flow shelter is the preferred option for the long-term solution and followed a design and assessment work on five options through the Glen Croe valley. Minister rejected a more expensive option to build a tunnel with a new 2.5-mile road, with 1.8 miles of tunnel under the Croe Water.

Campaigners had wanted the long-term solution completed by May 2024 but while a timeline has not been given for the scheme, in 2020, officials said that it may take ten years for a permanent solution to stop landslides on the iconic road.

Earlier this year, ministers said they were looking to increase the resilience of the temporary diversion route along the existing OMR in the medium term.

The first phase of implementing the medium-term solution was to begin some time this year with realignment of the southern end of the route.

The A83 at the Rest had been operating under a traffic lights system after a series of landslips over a number of years that have put the important Highlands route out of action for weeks at a time. The lights system ended more recently.

When there are further concerns road managers set up a convoy system on the A83 stretch.

Only when there are the most serious concerns do road managers divert to the OMR, which was originally built by General George Wade in response to the Jacobite uprisings in the 18th Century.