Early in the morning on Super Bowl Sunday 2008, a portion of the hillside behind Sapphires Mongolian Grill, on US Highway 101 in North Bend Oregon, came sliding towards the restaurant building. In preparation for this event, the restaurant Owner, Eugene Hill, retained SHN to evaluate and design a solution to protect his business from an existing slide that had originated on a neighbor’s property in early 2007.

SHN’s geosciences group determined that the high risk of continued debris flow required construction of a debris flow retaining wall. Constructed in the fall of 2007, SHN’s wall design withstood the impact of the recent rapidly moving slide and deflected the debris material safely away from the building. Mr. Hill stated, “If I hadn’t had this wall, the slide would have hit the building big time! I am pleased with the wall and my engineers at SHN”.

Constructed by Johnson Rock Products out of Coos Bay, Oregon, the debris flow retaining wall is a Hilfiker welded wire wall backfilled with rock (also known as a mechanically stabilized embankment). Hilfiker Retaining Walls (Eureka, CA), designed and patented the Welded Wire Wall in the early 1970's and has since supplied over 7,000 projects throughout the United States, Alaska, Canada, Hawaii, Africa, Indonesia, Siberia and South America.

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