Crews work to clear muddy Hwy 30 landslide

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - Highway crews with backhoes, dump trucks and snow-moving blades pushed a soupy mixture of gravel, mud and lumber off a state highway Wednesday after a mudslide slammed into homes and blocked the road.

But after working all night to clear U.S. 30, highway workers found that water was still flowing across it, posing a hazard both to traffic and the roadbed.

Nobody was injured in the slide Tuesday. Residents had been evacuated a day before after officials decided a slide could take place.

Traffic was rerouted around the slide, which was estimated to cover three football fields in length.

Two homes were destroyed and others hit by the slide.

Engineers were trying to figure out how to stem or divert the water Wednesday morning. There is no estimate of how soon the road might reopen, said Christine Miles, spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Transportation.

Crews hope to have one lane of the road open by Wednesday night and possibly the entire highway opened by Thursday morning, but officials made no guarantees.

U.S. 30 runs along the Columbia River, linking Portland and the Pacific Coast. The area hit by the slide was part of the region damaged by recent major storms.

The storms caused the mudslide, which is not uncommon in a region with steep slopes, weak rock beneath the soil and heavy winter rains, said Jason Hinkle, a geotechnical specialist with the Oregon Department of Forestry.

More than 10 inches of rain fell on some parts of the Oregon Coast Range during the two storms.

"When you get that much water in that soil, it's basically a lubricant," said Rod Nichols, a spokesman for the forestry department.

Debris and water high above the highway plugged a culvert through an abandoned railroad grade, the water backed up to a depth of 40 feet and made a pond about 200 feet by 250 feet, Nichols said.

The company that owns the land notified the state days ago of the slide potential, but a contractor was unable to relieve the stress on the railroad grade, Hinkle said.

So on Monday, people living below the pond were evacuated, and on Tuesday the highway department closed the road after Hinkle warned that the slide was imminent. He was proved right about an hour later.

He and Nichols said the slide flowed about a mile and three-quarters downhill, reaching a speed of 30 mph to 40 mph uphill and then slowing before it oozed out over the highway. 

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)