Landslide Sweeps Fishermen Into River
A landslide Sunday morning at a popular steelhead fishing hole swept four people into the Cowlitz River, and two were hospitalized, one with life-threatening injuries.
About 30 people were fishing on foot and from boats about 10:30 a.m. when trees, rocks and mud broke off a 100-foot clay embankment at a bend in the river, Lewis County sheriff’s deputy Gordon Spanski said.
The resulting wave nearly swamped some boats and drenched fishermen on the other side, about 80 feet away from the bank.
Twice as many people probably would have been fishing at the site, just downstream from the Blue Creek fish hatchery about 15 miles southeast of Centralia, had it not been Super Bowl Sunday, Sheriff Gordon McCrosky said.
Five people got out of the way of the slide, but four were carried into the river and were rescued by other fishermen, Spanski said.
Dioscoro Bajado, 56, of Bremerton, was in critical condition Sunday night at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where he was being treated for suffocation and possibly a broken neck, a nursing supervisor said.
James Dart, 44, of Tacoma, was treated for bumps and bruises at Providence Hospital in Centralia and then was released.
Dart said he knew the bluff was ripe for a slide because “it was straight up, the tree roots were all bare and today was the day.”
The debris could pose a hazard to boaters, and county officials will check with state agencies about the possibility of removing some of the larger trees and rocks from the channel, he added.
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