Another Rock Slide Closes Road Residents Again Find Themselves Cut Off In Community Near Bayview

The walls keep tumbling down.

A second rock slide northeast of this Pend Oreille Lake town has trapped about 75 families.

Again.

Early Friday morning, a huge mass of granite rocks toppled onto Cape Horn Road in the same place boulders fell almost two weeks ago.

Lakes Highway District and excavation crews were getting ready to open the road for residents to travel to work when the rocks fell around 5:45 a.m., said Bill Sweetwood with the Timberlake Fire Protection District.

No one was injured. The road will remained closed until officials decide what to do next.

“It was big or bigger than the first,” Sweetwood said.

The first slide happened Jan. 30. Officials believe the rocks became unstable after cold snaps and thawing.

Cape Horn Road was shut down for three days, then reopened to residents for limited travel.

After Lynn Jennings and her two daughters discovered they were cut off again, they packed their bags.

“We just packed up and called the boat. Now we’re not going to come back until it’s done,” Jennings said.

Her two daughters, Teresa and Michelle, have missed two days of school at Timberlake High. She has missed three days of work at a Post Falls bank.

They’ll be staying with relatives in Spirit Lake.

“We were frustrated. It was like, `Oh, no. Not again,”’ Jennings said.

Work crews were clearing unstable rock above where the slide occurred. They had planned to work on the road for another month to two months.

Now Lake Highway District officials and Kootenai County disaster service officials haven’t decided what approach they’ll take. Geologists are being called in to survey the area again.

“They may decide to keep it closed. If they do that, it will really impact the area,” Sweetwood said.

There will be a community meeting at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Cape Horn Marina to discuss plans with residents.

Timberlake firefighters began ferrying residents back and forth again. By 11 a.m. they had ferried about a dozen people from Raven Point Marina to the public docks in Bayview, Sweetwood said.

Last week, Gov. Kirk Kempthorne declared the rock slide a state disaster, and $550,000 in federal emergency aid is available to help remove rock from the previous slide.

No one knows yet if more money is on its way.

Many speculated a Jan. 19 earthquake in the area caused the first slide.

However, some say there’s no proof the earthquake, which had a magnitude of 3.7, caused the slide.

“It’s unlikely that it did cause it,” said Roy Breckenridge, associate director of the Idaho Geological Survey at the University of Idaho.

The small earthquake was measured on Lake Pend Orielle almost two weeks before the slide. Breckenridge said he did not see any earthquake-like events associated with the second slide.

This sidebar appeared with the story:

SUNDAY MEETING

A community meeting to discuss Friday’s rock slide will be at 2 p.m. Sunday at Cape Horn Marina clubhouse.

Residents needing ferry transportation to Bayview should call 683-1916. The pickup location has changed from Raven Point Marina to Cape Horn Marina.