Should’ve called a soils engineer

Here’s a delicious irony for you: Heavy rains damaged access to Ark Encounter, the colossal make-believe Noah’s Ark used by Ken Ham to fleece the gullible.

Owners of a replica of Noah’s Ark are suing their insurers, saying the companies failed to adequately cover damage to the surrounding property caused by heavy rain.

The ark itself — a 510-foot wooden ship modeled after the biblical ark — made it through the rain just fine, a representative for Ark Encounter in Williamstown, Kentucky, told CNN. But the rainfall in 2017 and 2018 caused a “significant landslide” on the property, which undermined an access road leading to the massive wooden vessel.

As a result, the access road was unsafe to use …

I’ve no idea whether Ark Encounter served as its own general contractor on the project, or if it was turned over to some design-build firm, or what, but this is a type of failure that any competent soils (or geotechnical, my specialty) engineer would have investigated prior to site design. Interestingly, the story makes no mention of a suit against the engineers, so I’m guessing that none was consulted.

I’ve never been to Ark Encounter, and am not going to ever debase myself by going, but there’s a video tour here.

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