WSDOT officials closed all northbound lanes of the freeway and said they had to wait until Thursday morning to assess whether it was safe to remove the debris and allow traffic through.
“WSDOT geotechnical engineers will need to evaluated the stability of the hillside and they will not be able to safely accomplish this until daylight,” the department said in a statement. “Additional boulders have come down onto the highway and conditions are still extremely hazardous.”
It isn’t until the hillside is inspected that WSDOT can get a better idea of when the lanes could reopen, the department said. By Wednesday night, about 100 cubic yards of debris had slid onto the freeway — or about 10 dump trucks full.
Greenwell pointed to visible cracks in the ground near the top of the slide area. That instability, along with the lack of sunlight, meant the area wasn’t safe for inspectors.
Finding a convenient detour around the slide proved difficult for motorists, and traffic backed up past La Center. Many drivers exited at Dike Access Road and got back on I-5 in the other direction.
Green Mountain Road, a back road that heads north from Woodland toward Kalama, was open only to residents in the area, Cowlitz County’s Department of Emergency Management said. WSDOT didn’t identify that route as a detour, but there also wasn’t much they could do to keep motorists from using it as one, officials said.
Even those with the idea to backtrack, cross the river into Oregon and take Highway 30 north were thwarted; the Oregon Department of Transportation reported that Highway 30 was closed between Mileposts 38 and 44 near Rainier, Ore., because of another landslide.
“Freight traffic should use (Interstate) 84 or (state Highway) 14 to (Highway) 97,” a road that leads to Yakima, WSDOT said.
The Woodland Wal-Mart opened its parking lot to travelers in case they needed to camp in their vehicles overnight. The Gee Creek rest area south of Ridgefield was packed with parked tractor-trailers.
Lakewood residents Lynda Turte and her fiancé, Taylor Lopez, were driving home Wednesday after visiting a potential wedding venue in Ariel when they learned through social media about the slide. Turte said she scoured the Internet for information about a possible detour and learned that Highway 30 was a dead end. Police officers attempted to direct traffic the best they could in the slide’s aftermath, but it wasn’t clear where the couple should go, she added.
Turte used an app on her phone, which directed her to Green Mountain Road.
“We were a little nervous about that, given the landslides in the area,” Turte said of the back road, “but it really was our only option at that point.”
From Green Mountain Road, they were able to navigate their way back to the freeway in Kalama. Turte said she feels bad for anyone who got stuck in the traffic, but she is glad nobody was hurt in the landslide.
The BNSF Railway line, which runs between the southbound and northbound lanes of I-5 just north of Woodland, was not affected by the slide, railway spokesman Gus Melonas said.
