The Sørkjosen Tunnel Scandal

Few road projects in Norwegian history have gone as spectacularly wrong as the Sørkjosfjellet tunnel. Built to bypass a dangerous stretch of the E6 over Reisafjellet, the project was hit by two separate scandals within months: a foreign contractor so incompetent the contract had to be cancelled, and a catastrophic landslide triggered by the construction itself. Spanish contractor OSSA (Obras Subterráneas) won the 415-million-kroner tunnel contract in 2014 with the cheapest bid, significantly undercutting Scandinavian competitors like Skanska and Veidekke. Problems started immediately. OSSA took months to set up and fired its first blasts only in November, deep into the polar darkness. Their equipment was undersized: a regular excavator instead of a modified tunnel machine, a small wheel loader, and shorter drill guides than Norwegian standard. When their laser navigation system failed, workers hung strings from the ceiling to aim the tunnel bore. The tunnel kept drifting off course. Safety incidents escalated. A diesel heater with an open flame was found inside an explosives storage tent, right next to buckets of liquid blasting slurry. Detonators turned up in an office toilet. In January 2015, an unauthorized worker fired a blast while people nearby had no idea a detonation was coming. Communication relied on a chain from Spanish to English to Norwegian through a translator with no technical background. For the rest, the crew used Google Translate, which in 2014 was still years away from its neural upgrade and practically useless for technical terminology. After six months, OSSA had advanced just 150 metres from one side and 350 from the other. In Norway, 100 metres per week is normal. Statens vegvesen terminated the contract in March 2015. OSSA sued, calling the termination unlawful. The Spanish ambassador wrote to Norway's Transport Ministry in the company's defence. When new bids were invited, OSSA applied again and was once again the cheapest. This time they were rejected. Skanska won the contract, arrived in September 2015, and had to re-bolt and re-concrete 250 metres of OSSA's substandard work before driving the tunnel forward. When OSSA later bid on another tunnel project near Kongsberg, the site manager in Sørkjosen sent a devastating reference that killed their chances there too. Two months after OSSA's contract was cancelled, the second scandal struck. On the night of May 9, 2015, up to 1.4 million cubic metres of shoreline slumped into the sea at Sørkjosen. Over a kilometre of coastline collapsed, shattering the harbour's breakwater, jetty and pier. Three houses were evacuated. The landslide severed the E6, forcing a 700-kilometre detour through Finland. An independent investigation led by NTNU professor Steinar Nordal found the cause: in November 2014, during OSSA's tenure, a breakwater had been widened by filling tunnel spoil and crushed rock into the sea. This destabilized the sensitive clay ground. Heavy rainfall triggered the final collapse, but the construction work was the underlying cause. Local fishermen had warned about the dumping beforehand. The area's unstable ground had a grim precedent. In 1959, a landslide at nearby Sokkelvik destroyed the village and killed nine people. Geologists included that tragedy in their 2015 report, suspecting the same clay formations. Statens vegvesen regional director Torbjørn Naimak later admitted that had they known the true ground conditions, they would probably have tunnelled around the area entirely. The tunnel was eventually completed by Skanska and now carries the E6 through the mountain.