Parts of U.S. 2, an important road cutting across Washington’s Cascade mountains, will likely remain closed for months due to flood and slide damage, Gov. Bob Ferguson said Tuesday.
A 49-mile stretch of the highway between Skykomish and Leavenworth has been shut down since last week, blocking travel over Stevens Pass. It’s one of the most significant road outages the state is dealing with after days of heavy rain and widespread flooding.
Ferguson described the road as “severely damaged” and said it’s very difficult to know how long repairs will take. “We anticipate that Highway 2 will be closed for months,” he said.
“We’re going to do everything we possibly can to repair it as quickly as possible,” he added.
Transportation Secretary Julie Meredith said areas along the highway are washed out to the point where the road is no longer there.
“We will need to rebuild those sections,” she said.
A bridge near milepost 54, Meredith said, is covered in several feet of debris, with active landslides still happening nearby.
Meredith said there is no estimated time for when the highway could reopen and that it’s too soon to know whether it might be possible to open some segments earlier.
Ferguson said he pushed in a recent meeting to see if the highway could be repaired faster, then saw photos of the damage.
“It’s a very volatile situation,” he said.
Other major roads were also badly damaged during the past week.
In Naches, about 200 feet of U.S. 12 was swept away by the Naches River. There is a local detour around that closure. The state transportation department is hoping to have this part of U.S. 12 reopened in the next few weeks, Meredith said.
A section of State Route 410, between Enumclaw and Greenwater, also washed out. The road reopened Tuesday afternoon for one-lane, alternating traffic.
Meredith said the road in this area is still actively eroding and that it is not clear how long repairs to State Route 410 could take.
Tuesday saw the state’s first report of a fatality tied to the flood event. A man in Snohomish County died after he drove around road closure signs and into a ditch with about 6 feet of water.
The transportation department has reopened 60 roads that had closed due to the flood event, according to Meredith. She thanked the National Guard for providing aerial images of damaged routes, including U.S. 2.
“It’s important to remember that these roads could close again with the more rain and the continuing landslide risk that we have coming,” Meredith said. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”
This story was originally published in the Washington State Standard.
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