A TikTok user filmed herself running for her life from a rockslide and then flagging down motorists to stop before getting caught in the mass of falling stones and earth in Alaska.
Alana Davis was lying on a beach making a video by the Douglas Highway near Juneau when there was suddenly a huge noise coming from the rockslide on April 6.
The woman looked shocked before getting to her feet with her camera and running to safety.
Then realising the danger for cars heading along unaware of the rockslide ahead, she started screaming for them to stop.
“Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop! Stop your car,” she was shouting and waving.
She then got her breath before saying to the camera: “That’s a rockslide.”
The clip then shows Alana with a man who she claimed was about to drive into the rockslide around a blind bend in the road.
The man said: “Literally 30 seconds from getting killed. Think about that.”
And Alana continued: “I ran screaming down the road just so you know on the beach flailing my arms.”
The road has now been closed off with the Alaska Department of Transportation stating that a second rockslide began about 500 feet above the road and it is unclear when it will be ready to be reopened.
The department’s spokesperson Sam Dapcevich, reported KTOO, said: “When material comes loose from that height, it builds up quite a bit of speed by the time it gets down to the road, so we’re keeping the road closed at this time.”
He added that geologists will examine the slide and rocks to see if there is likely to be any more landslides. Drones will be used to examine the state of the ground but that won’t be possible until the weather improves and the wind dies down.
The second landslide on the North Douglas Highway took place four days after the TikTok video and fortunately again nobody was injured.
After the first rockslide the debris was cleared in a day despite there being a significant amount but the second time there were even more rocks and earth.
“This time the rocks actually made it all the way across the roadway. Some of them even made it down into the water nearby,” he said. “And some of the boulders I’m told are the size of cars.”
The City and Borough of Juneau’s Emergency Manager Tom Mattice said that ice melting at this time of year makes rock slides more likely.
“That water melting and freezing and melting and freezing acts like a jackhammer on the rock that it slowly breaks it apart,” Mattice said.
