INDEX – The road home for Bruce Kimball is gone, obliterated by the Election Day Flood.
The double yellow line that used to guide him to his cabin in the mountains above Index now dips into the blue, cold, hungry maw of the North Fork Skykomish River just short of his cabin.
The stripe normally marks the center of the Index-Galena Road. Now it doesn’t resurface for half a mile.
The Skykomish River, which rose to record levels during the Election Day Flood, has moved into the road’s former route, chewing though asphalt, concrete barriers and sandy roadbed.
Giant piles of trees, root balls and boulders now sit where the river used to flow.
Another chunk of the road was washed out less than a mile up the river. In all, the road was damaged in about a dozen spots between Index and Skykomish, most of it along the 10 miles stretching above Index.
It will cost at least $7 million and take years to fix the road, said Roy Scalf, operations manager for Snohomish County’s road maintenance department.
The county is looking to the federal government for help. The road needs to be entirely relocated from the two washouts, Scalf said.
Countywide, flood damage is estimated to be at least $20 million, a number that is expected to grow, officials who responded to the flood said.
Index-Galena Road is the main access to about 60 cabins. No cabins there were lost, but several were damaged in communities called Skyko3 and Skyko4, said Kimball, who watched the flood from his cabin on the river.
“There was a 10-foot wall of water that stood there for 24 hours,” he said, pointing to a bridge that crosses the river just out his back door. He said the water reached within a foot of his porch but never made it inside his cabin.
Propane tanks, back porches, outhouses and a host of odds and ends are gone from the neighborhood, Kimball said. He’s a Renton resident who stays at his cabin at least once a week.
“Several places up here lost riverfront property,” Kimball said. “Some of us are a lot closer to the river.”
A U.S. Forest Service crew has made the road passable from Skykomish and Jacks Pass, a 40-mile detour to the cabins.
However, Jacks Pass is usually closed for the winter once it starts snowing, which could happen any day, Scalf said.
The county and the U.S. Forest Service are discussing keeping the road open this winter so cabin owners can get to their property.
If there is an agreement to keep it open and plow, it will be considered an emergency opening. That will allow the county and the Forest Service to close the road to the public, Scalf said.
Keys would be issued to property owners. Everyone else would be kept out, to protect their safety and to avoid looting.
The two sections of road that were obliterated get most of the attention, but there is plenty of other damage, Scalf said.
In some places, erosion and rockslides took their toll.
At one spot, a speed limit sign pokes out from below a pile of rocks 4 feet deep.
“The question is: Was the rock going faster than 25 mph?” Scalf asked.
Reporter Lukas Velush: 425-339-3449 or lvelush@heraldnet.com.
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