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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Storm leaves at least 5 dead, I-5 closed


A Chehalis shopping center is completely submerged Tuesday just off an overpass at exit 77. Interstate 5, which runs below the overpass, is completely submerged as well.  Seattle Times
 (Steve Ringman Seattle Times / The Spokesman-Review)
Associated Press The Spokesman-Review

CENTRALIA, Wash. – Residents waited glumly for muddy floodwaters to recede and motorists faced massive detours Tuesday as an overflowing river severed the Pacific Northwest’s biggest and most important transportation corridor by covering it to a depth of 10 feet.

Elsewhere in the state, people surveyed the flooded homes, fallen trees and washed-out roads left behind by drenching rain and howling winds that ripped through on Monday, leaving at least five people dead.

On the edge of downtown Centralia, waist-high water the consistency of chocolate milk covered streets as police used small boats to get to houses in flooded neighborhoods.

Firefighters finally persuaded Katrina Puris, 25, to flee her home as her neighbors’ cars were floating down the street late Monday night. She had been reluctant to leave with three children under 5 in the house.

“They were yelling: ‘If you’re not coming out now, we’re leaving,’ ” Puris said Tuesday of the firefighters who urged her to leave. “So I just grabbed everything I could and we just ran.”

As the family huddled with about a dozen other people in the back of a truck on the way to high ground, Puris said her kids did better than she did.

“They were pretty good. They were all quiet,” Puris said. “I was scared. I was bawling.”

The rising Chehalis River cut off Interstate 5 and other roads between Centralia and Chehalis, forcing officials to close the freeway at least until Thursday.

Although rainfall slackened overnight, runoff from the deluge-soaked hills continued to feed the river, which crested at nearly 10 feet over flood stage on Tuesday. At its highest, it was roughly six inches higher than the previous record set in February 1996, said meteorologist Johnny Burg. Flooding closed the freeway for four days that year.

Chehalis City Manager Merlin MacReynold said between 70 and 80 people had to be rescued in the city limits alone and called the flooding worse than in 1996.

“It’s larger; it crested higher; it happened a lot faster,” MacReynold said.

The warm, wet storm system moved into British Columbia on Monday night and was dissipating over Canada, said National Weather Service forecaster Jay Albrecht.

Gov. Chris Gregoire has declared a state of emergency and said she would seek federal money to repair the damage.

“It’s pretty devastating, and you can only imagine what it was like for the people trying to get out,” Gregoire said Tuesday on a tour of the flood damage.

With Interstate 5 closed, state officials were recommending a lengthy detour from Seattle to Portland: Interstate 90 across the Cascade mountains and down U.S. 97 through central Washington to the Oregon border – a route that roughly doubles the three-hour trip on I-5.

About three miles of the highway were covered with water, although some parts of the southbound lanes had begun to clear on Tuesday. State officials hope to open the highway on Thursday but were waiting to see what damage the flooding might have done.

“We’ve got to be able to see if we have structural integrity in the highway,” said David Dye, deputy secretary of transportation. “We’ve got lots of debris, garbage, tires, dead rats everywhere.”

A total figure for the number of people rescued was not immediately available, but the Coast Guard reported its helicopter crews alone had plucked 168 stranded residents from flooded areas by Tuesday night.

Two hikers were found dead Tuesday from an avalanche in the Cascade Mountains, according to the King County Sheriff’s office. The hikers were killed as heavy rain atop heavy snow increased the avalanche danger.

A man in Mason County died Monday night when he was buried in a building hit by a mudslide, Kyle Herman, a spokesman for the Washington State Emergency Management Division, said Tuesday. Two other men died in Grays Harbor County, one in Aberdeen who was hit by a falling tree as he was trying to clear another downed tree and one in Montesano who apparently relied on oxygen equipment that stopped operating after electricity was lost, according to Grays Harbor County officials.

In the Lewis County town of Winlock, a dive team planned to spend today searching normally tiny Wallers Creek for Richard Hiatt, 81, believed to have been swept away when a bank gave out from underneath him.

The latest of three storms slammed into the state on Monday, hitting hardest on the Olympic Peninsula, Kitsap County and the southwest corner of the state, leaving at least 73,000 Western Washington residents without power. More than 50,000 were still in the dark Tuesday, many of them in Grays Harbor County. Among other inconveniences in that area, without electricity to run fuel pumps, motorists had to travel to Elma or McCleary to get gas.

The National Guard was delivering emergency generators to smaller towns in Grays Harbor County to operate services such as hospitals and water systems, said Rob Harper, spokesman for the state Emergency Management Department.

The National Weather Service said 3 to 6 inches of rain fell across much of Western Washington on Monday. The 24-hour rain total for Bremerton as of Monday evening was 10.78 inches.

Colder, drier weather was forecast for the rest of the week, Albrecht said. Some rivers around the state were still rising Tuesday, but many had begun to subside. Rain-saturated soil also increased the risk of landslides, the weather service said.

The storm overwhelmed a number of sewage treatment plants, allowing tons of raw sewage to spew into Puget Sound.

Other than I-5, major road closures from flooding and slides included many stretches of U.S. 101 along the coast and the Olympic Peninsula and U.S. 12 east of Aberdeen.

Mudslides halted Amtrak passenger train service between Portland and Vancouver, B.C., at least until today.

The state Department of Transportation said 54,000 vehicles normally travel the closed stretch of I-5 daily, including 10,000 trucks. The department estimated the closure is costing haulers about $4 million per day.