Terrorist Tunneling Terminated
Army Spc. Stephen Green and Army Spc. Eduardo Bonilla welded steel plates over all the points that led into the tunnel while Equipment Platoon soldiers prepared the holes for repair. The soldiers repaired the craters by chipping away the damaged asphalt and cleaning up the site.
After three hours in the tunnels and an additional two hours fixing the holes, Army Spc. Christopher Sallas used a forklift to place a steel plate into the large crater in the overpass. Next, the crater team, led by Army Staff Sgt. Wesley Roach, placed a quick-drying asphalt alternative over the plate. After smoothing out the mixture, the team placed road cones around the asphalt to allow it to dry without interruption by traffic.
A follow-up visit to the site a few days later revealed a situation that was not all that surprising, given what brought them out there in the first place: the asphalt and steel plate had been removed. The engineers then returned to the site with another solution.