Rockslide near Capitol Reef shuts SR-24, knocks out power to roughly 1,700

A rockslide struck Wayne County near the Capitol Reef corridor on Feb. 20, 2026, blocking both directions of State Route 24 and triggering a power outage that affected roughly 1,700 customers. The slide forced an immediate shutdown of SR-24 and interrupted electricity service on a distribution span described in social posts as stretching between Hanksville and Capitol Reef.

Local responders moved quickly. An Instagram post from a responding account reported, “today a rockslide blocked both directions of SR-24 near Capitol Reef. Our crews jumped into action and reopened the road in about two hours.” The Original Report summarized the incident similarly and added that “Emergency crews mobilized to clear debris and restore services; the event was report”, a line that ends in a truncated word in the supplied copy. No agency names for “our crews” or “emergency crews” were provided in the available excerpts.

Power outage details remain limited. The Original Report put the outage at roughly 1,700 customers, while Facebook and Yahoo posts described the outage as having “spread between Hanksville and Capitol Reef.” The utility responsible for the outages was not identified in the supplied materials, and no restoration timeline beyond crews mobilizing was included.

Travel impacts were immediate for drivers on Utah Highway 24. Instagram’s timeline claim that crews reopened SR-24 “in about two hours” is the only operational time-stamp available in the excerpts; the Original Report confirms the road was shut but does not list closure or reopening times. The specific mile marker or distance from the Capitol Reef visitor center for the Feb. 20 slide was not provided in the current accounts.

The event echoes past disruptions along SR-24 documented in National Park Service incident logs from 1997. Those entries record a May 12, 1997 rockslide that “completely blocked Utah Highway 24” about “five miles east of the visitor center,” and note that park chief of operations Bob Van Belle “free climbed the vertical towers to clear away loose rock on top, permitting blasters to work safely below.” The 1997 files also show the highway later reopened and that Tom Cox served as incident commander with Thea Nordling as PIO; one entry records the snow having “settled to a depth of about two feet,” compared with “about three inches last winter.”

As of Feb. 24, 2026, published excerpts do not name the responding road crews, the power utility, or provide engineering assessments or long-term repairs for the Feb. 20 slide. The road was reported reopened in the immediate aftermath per the Instagram post, but utility circuit details and final restoration counts remain unreported in the supplied materials.