Statoil Petrol Station and Jewish Cemetery, Lebork, Poland

Statoil, the Norwegian National Oil Company, own a petrol station in Lebork in Northern Poland, as part of a chain of 160 petrol stations in Poland. The access road to this petrol station crosses a Jewish cemetery, where all the gravestones were removed in the Nazi era. Arieh Klein developed a solution to rebuild the access road, with a steel structure providing an 'air-gap', so that it will satisfy the demands of Jewish Halachic law. Lower layer of geogrid in access road across Jewish Cemetery at Lebork

In the summer of 2004 a temporary entry road to the petrol station was built, using high-strength geogrid underneath fill and 18 cm. thick concrete plates. The access road was then excavated down to the original ground, and was rebuilt using high-strength FORTRAC geogrid, with a working tensile strength of 120 kN/m (12 ton/m) in each direction at an elongation of 1.5%. This was necessary, since the top level of the cavities in the graves was about 20 - 30 cm. below the bottom of the excavated roadway. The subgrade was leveled with a thin layer of sand, and then a non-woven geotextile was placed below the geogrid, to prevent loss of sand and and gravel fill.

The air-gap required by Jewish Halachic law was created using two anti-corrosion steel plates separated by specially bent steel pegs, to create a gap of 10 cm. between the plates. The steel sections were fabricated off-site to fit the profile of the access road, and were brought to Lebork in 2 metre wide sections. They were placed in the roadway using special cranes, after the lower high-strength geogrid had been placed along the length of the road. The sections were joined together using stainless steel bolts and welded joints. Placing of steel section in access road to Lebork Petrol Station

The upper geogrid was placed transversally above the steel plates, across the road, and 7 m. in each direction (east-west). More compacted gravel fill was placed over the whole width of the road and the geogrid, to give the necessary tensile strength to the gravel/geogrid composite. The road was completed with interlocking bricks and re-opened in mid-September, 2004. Measurements are being taken at regular intervals to check for possible settlements.

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