Rain, Mudslides Plague Puget Sound
Winter is ending the way it began in Western Washington, with torrential rain, flooding and mudslides that destroyed at least four homes and forced the evacuation of dozens more.
On Wednesday, a slide knocked a small frame house off its foundation into the middle of a residential street in Seattle’s Beacon Hill neighborhood. No one was hurt.
The night before in the city’s Magnolia neighborhood, a slide destroyed a Perkins Lane home with one man inside, but he managed to escape without injury.
On Bainbridge Island, a mudslide crushed a vacant summer home just 150 feet from the spot where a January slide crushed a house and killed a family of four.
In Bremerton, a small bridge was destroyed and a home on Beach Drive in Port Orchard was knocked off its foundation and destroyed.
State agricultural officials worked with Grays Harbor County to let farmers know how to dispose of dead livestock.
Gov. Gary Locke on Wednesday declared seven counties - Grays Harbor, Kitsap, Mason, Jefferson, Clallam, Lewis and Pacific - in a state of emergency and authorized use of state resources, including the National Guard, to deal with widespread flooding.
Meanwhile, Thurston, King and Whatcom counties and the cities of Snoqualmie and Seattle activated emergency operations centers.
Four shelters were set up in Western Washington, including two in Grays Harbor County at Montesano and Copalis Crossing and two in Mason County, at Shelton and the Skokomish Valley.
At least 300 families were asked to evacuate their homes - and about half did - near the Wynoochee River in southwestern Washington’s Grays Harbor County. Twenty people were rescued from their homes by boat, said Paul Wenzel, a supervisor at the county emergency-management agency.
The Weather Service said a record 1.86 inches of rain fell at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Tuesday, breaking the 1950 mark of 0.88 inch for March 18.
A mudslide from the east side of Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill hit a van with two men and a woman inside on Wednesday morning. They were taken to Harborview Medical Center and treated for cuts and bruises, hospital spokesman Larry Zalin said.
The dirt and debris blocked the southbound lanes of Aurora - the in-town name for U.S. 99 - for several hours just north of downtown Seattle, snarling the morning’s rush hour traffic.
East of Seattle, King County police evacuated three homes threatened by a mudslide in the suburban Kirkland area near Lake Washington.