Moving house stalled? No, all went by plan

It was quite a sight on Sunday — enough to gather a small crowd with cameras.

A house appeared to be stuck on a state Highway 126 bridge near Eagle Crest

But for the moving company trucking the house, they said Monday that everything went according to plan –even temporarily taking out residential mailboxes in the process of moving the house from Tumalo to Terrebonne.

“When you have an average pavement width of 24 to 28 feet wide, (and a house 35 feet wide), so we take all the road, plus the shoulder, therefore we have to remove mail boxes,” Chris Arenault, the moving company’s owner, said Monday.

The Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office got phone calls from Tumalo-area residents saying signs and mailboxes were down along Couch Market and Collins roads.

Arsenault said it was expected — they couldn’t get through otherwise.

Crews had to remove dozens of mailboxes and a few signs in the process of squeezing the house down the rural roads. a project that had an ODOT permit.

“There’s no way to tell which mailbox has to go before moving down the road, everything’s varied by how you have it loaded, equipment heights, equipment widths,” Arsenault said.

It’s a slow journey. moving a house that’s 35 feet wide and 70 feet long. Arsenault said it was about a 12-hour day of travel to move the house about 30 miles to its new home.

And by Monday morning you couldn’t hardly tell a house on was the move down Couch Market road.

Some trees were missing limbs — Arsenault said his company also had a permit to limb trees obstructing the truck’s path — but all mail boxes seemed to be in order Monday.

Arsenault said they put every mailbox back, sometimes replacing rotting wooden posts at the expense of the company.

As for the illusion of a house stuck on a bridge, Arsenault said it was just a stop to adjust the load over the height of the guardrails.

Highway 126 was closed for about 45 minutes by the Cline Falls Highway overpass.

ODOT officials told NewsChannel 21 there were many 911 calls Sunday morning about a house blocking both lanes of traffic on Highway 126 underthe Falls Highway overpass.

ODOT Incident Responder David Moyer told NewsChannel 21 the truck was only stopped to make adjustments and raise the load in order to pass over the guardrails of the bridge.

He said the truck had flaggers who stopped traffic on both sides.

ODOT officials stayed afterward to examine the bridge for any structural damage, and told NewsChannel 21 that three guard rails were slightly damaged.

Moyer said the truck driver permits tomove the house on the highway and county raods.