U.S. 95 Mudslide Leaves Boundary County Split No Quick Fixes And No Good Alternative Route
A massive mudslide on U.S. Highway 95 has cut Boundary County in two.
There’s no safe passage north from Bonners Ferry for school buses and no way for most commercial truck traffic to get through town.
A dirt road that crosses private property is serving as a makeshift route for ambulances, sheriff’s vehicles, fire engines and other emergency traffic.
It’s the shortest detour, and flaggers guard it closely.
Everyone else is faced with a long, arduous drive on side roads that never were designed for heavy traffic.
The situation could continue for months unless an alternate route is improved or - less likely - the Highway 95 North Hill route can be restored. The highway was destroyed Friday evening when a slide a mile north of Bonners Ferry swept a thousand feet downhill, burying construction equipment and tearing out the Union Pacific Railroad bed. It was triggered by construction to realign the highway.
“There’s been a whole lot of head-scratching up on that hill,” incident commander Dave Kramer told school officials Monday afternoon as they looked for answers to their transportation dilemma.
After much discussion, school officials decided to limp ahead with the school year under dismal conditions.
School will be back in session Thursday, with elementary students who live north of Bonners Ferry attending elementary schools on the north side and those on the south side of the slide attending school there.
Junior high and high school students who live in the north end will have to find their own way around the slide to get to school in Bonners Ferry.
School bus drivers have flat-out refused to drive on county District 5 Road, one of the alternative routes that heads north of Bonners Ferry. The narrow road is subject to rockfall and sloughing from overhead bluffs.
Buses also cannot use the Westside Road, which is designated for double axle vehicles and local traffic. It’s just one lane in places.
Logging trucks can negotiate the twisting, narrow road, but all other trucks with trailers must take a hundred-mile detour through Montana.
One rig that sneaked through Sunday failed to squeeze around a sharp turn on the Westside road and stopped traffic for hours.
About 250 students ride the buses from the north end of the county south. But the school district can’t do much for them.
“The options are very limited,” said Superintendent Reid Straabe. He’s hoping that state officials will improve another north-south route that school buses can use. He’s also counting on state education officials to give the district a break on attendance requirements for funding purposes.
“Attendance will go down, no doubt about that,” he said.
School officials are also worried that the disaster could deal a blow to their school construction levy.
The loss of money that local businesses face could turn some merchants against the measure for a new high school, said Terry Sherven, Bonners Ferry High School principal.
The slide was not entirely unexpected.
State engineers were well aware of the instability of the area, according to Jeff Stratten, Department of Transportation spokesman in Boise. They became aware of it while planning to rebuild and realign the North Hill - an $18 million project.
The state hired a top geotechnical firm to deal with the problem, he said, and the engineering plans were reviewed by federal highway officials as well.
But locals wonder why the slide occurred if the geology was reviewed so carefully. Boundary County Commissioners have requested a copy of the geotechnical report, according to county spokesman Mike Weland.
On Monday, the state sent a letter to the Federal Highway Administration requesting federal money to help pay for improvements to local detour roads, and to repair damage done by the “unanticipated catastrophic debris flow.”
Locals say it’s high time there was a decent back-up road north of Bonners Ferry. Two weeks ago, a smaller slide struck.
“Every winter we go through this,” said flagger Dawna Langford.
The North Hill on Highway 95 is a steep, winding route that sends semitrucks jack-knifing down it, and closes the highway for hours at a time.
The realignment project was supposed to correct that problem.
On Monday, the only cleanup work at the site was by Union Pacific Railroad’s contractor, Rick Franklin Corp.
Crews with excavators worked at the bottom of the slide to clear a path to the railroad’s tracks, which are suspended like clothesline 60 feet above the mud.
Five to six trains normally use that route each day, hauling freight from Canada. Most of the trains are being rerouted onto Burlington NorthernSanta Fe tracks.
Despite the severity of the damage, the workers expect to have the route open by Saturday.
Al Mastrude stood watch several hundred feet uphill, warming himself with a small fire. Armed with a radio, he stood ready to tell his fellow workers to scram if the hillside started to move again.
“It’s stabilized a lot,” he said.
Others aren’t so sure.
New cracks have been discovered in the high pavement, and a stream gushes through the slide area. Experts have said that an equal amount of dirt and mud - as much as a million cubic yards - could be released in another slide.
“The slide is still unstable,” said Richard Wolfe, of the Bureau of Disaster Services. In a report to his agency, Wolfe said it’s impossible to do any work on the slide because of all the water running through it, potentially liquefying the soil.
The state has sent in experts to install sensing devices around the slide area. If the workers move directly under the most hazardous area before it’s safe, the county may ask for a hold-harmless agreement from the railroad to protect itself from liability, Wolfe said.
Already one worker was caught in an excavator in Friday night’s slide. Two bulldozers, a gravel hauling truck and a pickup were also buried in the slide.
All that was visible of the pickup Monday was two wheels sticking up, Weland said, “like a dead horse.”
Map of area
Staff writer Julie Titone contributed to this report.