Geotechnical engineers would then come Friday morning to assess the state of the hillside.
“We feel good about opening one lane tonight,”he said.
Northbound traffic was diverted off the road at Exit 22. The Clark County Fairgrounds opened to receive tractor-trailers blocked by the closure, and big rigs had packed Gee Creek Rest Area by early Thursday evening.
The slide caused the cancellation of 1A district high school basketball games at Centralia involving King’s Way Christian and Seton Catholic. A decision on rescheduling will be made this morning.
The Cowlitz County Sheriff’s Office reported traffic over Green Mountain Road was creeping at 5 mph at one point Thursday evening, as drivers tried to get around the blockage.
Shortly after the slide, Washington State Patrol Trooper Will Finn reported on Twitter that a nearly seven-foot pothole had opened in the right and center lanes of southbound I-5 at milepost 26 near Woodland.
Maintenance in the southbound lanes for the hole intermittently slowed traffic.
Treece said workers patched the pothole, and while it was a temporary fix, traffic southbound was moving fairly well that evening.
Rail traffic was not affected by the slide.
The slide and pothole occurred after an extraordinarily wet period, even by this winter’s standards. In a 24-hour period ending at 8:45 p.m., 1.54 inches of rain was recorded at Vancouver’s Pearson Field, according to the National Weather Service, and all of the region was under a flood advisory for much of the day.
In December 2015, a mudslide close to where the current slide is located closed traffic on the northbound side of the highway for more than a day.
