Just when we thought that the cleanup of that incredibly massive rock slide on Mansion House Hill (Route 209) in Mahoning Township was going to start, we find out that the contractor’s work crew was delayed by traffic in traveling toward the area. Result: a 24-hour postponement.

We have had rock slides from this dangerous mountainside cliff in the past but nothing this extensive or dramatic. The road has been partially blocked for more than a month. It’s a shame that it took an event of this magnitude to finally convince the state to take corrective action.

Merchants in Jim Thorpe and Lehighton are going nuts. The fall season is one of the busiest and most profitable of the year, especially in Carbon’s county seat. Officials hope they can get the work done before the end of the important fall foliage weekends coming up, but with the start of the project delayed by a day and the three-week projected completion at the mercy of the weather and unforeseen circumstances, all bets are off.

The entire roadway northbound and southbound will be closed Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. until 2 p.m. Route 209 traffic will be detoured to Packerton Dam Road, Hemlock Drive, Route 902, South Ninth Street, Route 443, Route 209, Harrity Road, Fairyland Road, Long Run Road, Maury Road and Route 903.

One lane will be open in both directions weekdays from 2 p.m. until 9 a.m. and from 2 p.m. Fridays until 9 a.m. Mondays.

On these busy fall weekends, under the best of circumstances, traffic crawls along Route 209 between Lehighton through Jim Thorpe. We can only envision snarled traffic, impatient motorists and short tempers. One thing we are happy to learn is that workers will scale back and remove additional rocks and install mesh netting to help prevent future rocks from tumbling down the mountainside. Given prior rockslides, these corrective measures should have been performed way back when.

Representatives of the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s region 5 have done a good job of keeping interested agencies apprised of how this tedious work will be performed. Special attention will be made to deal with school buses and trucks.

There are a dozen electronic billboards in place to inform motorists of the situation, and implicit in this information is the need to stay cool in what most certainly will be challenging times for motorists.

According to information published in the Times News previously, message boards and signs at the Mahoning Valley interchange will direct vehicles from southbound Route 209 onto the detour, starting at Harrity Road. They’ll end up at Route 903 using Fairyland, Long Run and Maury roads. A driver who misses the detour and continues on southbound 209, will be forced to use Packerton Dam and Hemlock roads to return to Route 443 and access the detour. If all that fails to deter a driver, there will be a turnaround near the Bagel Bunch.

Coming from Penn Forest Township and points north, message boards and signs on southbound Route 903 will direct traffic onto that detour in the opposite direction at Maury Road. If a truck makes it to the Route 903 bridge, a Jim Thorpe police officer will be posted to keep trucks off Susquehanna Street. To make matters even dicier this weekend, the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike will be completely closed between the Mahoning Valley and Lehigh Valley interchanges from 9 p.m. Friday until 4 a.m. Monday so a new bridge can be moved into place over Crackersport Road in South Whitehall Township, Lehigh County. This will require motorists to make about an hourlong detour.

By the way, if you’re considering grabbing a souvenir from the rockslide because of a bogus Craigslist item, don’t bother, it’s fake news. Even if it’s just a joke, PennDOT officials are warning people about this ad and urging them to ignore any others that are out there because of the potential danger of additional rocks falling until the area is stabilized.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com