Seattle Tunnel: What’s Blocking Bertha?

A Seattle tunnel is currently making the news headlines as works to create a new underground highway was halted. The reason the issue made the news is that no one actually knows what is stopping ‘Bertha’ from burrowing.

‘Bertha’ as she is fondly called is a 57-foot-wide tunnel maker that chomps her way through earth in order to make way for underground roads and trains.

But two weeks ago, just a thousand feet into ‘Bertha’s’ two mile dig she came to a stop. Chris Dixon from Seattle Tunnel Partners said: “We’re a bit puzzled about what’s preventing us from moving forward.”

He said Bertha came to a halt: “After unanticipated and increasing resistance was experienced, possibly due to an obstruction.”

Some kind of obstruction more than 60 feet beneath ground has locals in Seattle baffled as they try to explain what the phenomenon is all about.

A Seattle historian, Feliks Banel, has his theory: “There’s history buried everywhere. It could be Jimmy Hoffa, it might be Sasquatch or it could be a flying saucer, you know,” he said.

What is known is that the place where ‘Bertha’ is currently grounded was once beneath water and some have suggested that the blockage could be remnants of the city’s industrial era.

Lorraine McConaghy, a local historian said: “It could be just about any industrial artifact you can imagine that might have ended up in the water.”

Another historian, a teacher from Yakima agrees with McConaghy: “I’m assuming there’s probably an underground building, a ship, some sort of artifact from maybe 100 or 200 years ago,” she said.

For the time being ‘Bertha’ is well and truly stuck, Dixon said: “There’s thousands of guesses what’s going on, but until we get down there and see what the actual situation is, it’s just speculation and guesses.”

It remains to be seen what is causing the blockage in the Seattle tunnel as different theories abound. Share your theory of what you think it might be in the feed below.