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Sue Lani Madsen: Fire detours test everyone’s resilience
Any traffic jam tests drivers’ resilience. When drivers expecting freeway speeds were forced onto a single lane country highway, it was slow-motion, barely controlled chaos.
Interstate 90 usually flows peacefully through the southern edge of Lincoln County, until suddenly it didn’t Saturday afternoon. Closures in reaction to the Gray fire kicked off a parade through Davenport, Edwall, Harrington and Reardan last weekend as detours were hastily put into place.
Undersheriff Jesse Allen got the phone call from Spokane County that I-90 was being routed through northern Lincoln County.
“We had all of about 10 minutes notice,” Allen said.
Allen alerted Sheriff Gabe Gants, who was in Spokane at the time.
“My first response was I hope they’re sending help,” Gants said. “Our No. 1 concern was we’d have a pileup, but somehow we didn’t have a single accident.”
Allen’s initial challenge was figuring out resources available.
“Our goal was no collisions and to keep traffic flowing,” Allen said.
Keeping traffic on the designated routes and off local roads took more staffing than the sheriff’s office alone could handle. Allen said he appreciated the help from officers from the Spokane Police Department, Spokane County Sheriff, Washington State Patrol and the Department of Fish and Wildlife to keep routes open for emergency vehicles and local traffic along the county line. The state Department of Transportation staffed intersections at the beginning and end of the detours.
There was nowhere near enough manpower to put an officer at every closed road. Impatient drivers following GPS-recommended shortcuts leaked onto one-lane field roads, putting themselves and others at risk on every blind hill and corner. Most farmers had shut down harvest. Thankfully there were only close calls and no collisions. Drivers ignoring “road closed” signs were ticketed when caught.
“We made well over a hundred stops for people running roadblocks, probably three times as many, but we didn’t open case numbers for all of them,” Gants said.
There had already been an uptick in traffic on state Route 231 on Saturday morning as drivers avoided the area impacted by the Gray fire. Some large trucks struggled to stay in their own lane on corners, so the official detour limiting 231 to eastbound I-90 traffic via Reardan back to I-90 on the Sunset Hill was a relief. Westbound traffic was routed through Airway Heights, Reardan, Davenport and Harrington around the closure. It reduced the potential for a head-on collision, although local traffic still had access to the opposite lanes.
Not all drivers were prepared for the extra miles. On the eastbound route, there was no place to fuel up for the 32 miles from Sprague to Reardan, whether you needed diesel, gas or an electric charging station. Westbound was similar, with a single self-serve gas station midway up Highway 23 in Harrington.
“Some of the drivers understood, some were irritated there were limited services in our area,” Gants said about what he heard from business owners in Davenport. “Safeway had a line to use their bathroom so steady that employees were going home on break to use their own bathroom.”
Checking fuel and bladder levels before detouring would have been a good plan to be physically resilient.
On Sunday evening, the traffic jammed from I-90 all the way to Highway 2. The resilient ones rolled with the situation.
As we worked on temporary fencing across the pasture from the highway, we could see a young man with his window down singing to music. A woman popped her head out the sunroof like a parade princess, talking to a woman in the car behind her who was lazily leaning out a window.
There was the occasional impatient driver not quite grasping the situation. Sheriff Gants confirmed there was at least one arrest for reckless passing.
Some drivers stared ahead, perhaps contemplating their ruined plans for the evening. Others took advantage of the slow pace to enjoy the ride. One man walked his dog alongside the slow-moving car driven by a companion.
We finished the fence and got ready to unload 230 goats. They didn’t care that they’d had to detour home to avoid the fires and scrambled out of the double-decker stock trailer in an exuberant rush to dinner.
“Best show ever!” yelled a woman in a car creeping along the road.
Being resilient is about more than being prepared physically, it’s a positive mindset when life sends you on a detour. We’ve all been detoured this week. Embrace resilience in the chaos.
Contact Sue Lani Madsen @rulingpen@gmail.com.