Massive landslide shuts down I-5 in Bellingham for hours

BELLINGHAM, Wash. — More traffic headaches, this time out of Bellingham.

A massive mudslide kept northbound I-5 shut down for nearly 12 hours.

A bang, just as the earth gave way, trapping a semi-truck and a passenger vehicle with people inside.

Those people managed to get out safely.  This happened at about 4:40 this Sunday morning just north of the Iowa Street exit on northbound I-5.

A portion of southbound I-5 was closed for several hours.

But northbound I-5 at Milepost 254 was closed nearly all day.

KIRO 7 got a great view of where this slide happened. That’s because it happened just north of the pretty popular Alabama Street pedestrian overpass.  So, it was very easy to see.

The earth moved just above I-5 early this Sunday morning, trapping two vehicles and those inside, including a semi-driver, under mounds of dirt.

“There was people outside already exploring what was happening,” said a neighbor who did not want to be identified.  She says she heard what sounded like a bang just after 4:30 a.m. She looked outside to see her neighbors inspecting the damage.

“And they were concerned that the land had given way,” she said.

The land gave way, say state officials, in the midst of a deluge meteorologists had warned us about.

“We had a lot of rain overnight and into the early morning hours into the morning,” said WSDOT spokeswoman RB McKeon.

She says that precipitated the massive slide of debris that spread across all northbound lanes of I-5 and part of the southbound lane near the Iowa Street exit.

“Crews are estimating around 2,000 cubic yards,” McKeon said, which is more than 400,000 gallons of dirt.

Bellingham Fire posted that a crew member removed a portion of carpet padding from a 2-and-a-half-foot culvert.  That caused the water to back up near the slide. WS DOT crews were shoring up the slide area until engineers can get a good look. It proved quite a spectacle for Bellingham residents.

“Just a good indicator of how vulnerable our highways are due to a little spill,” said Hugh Conroy, Bellingham resident since 1996.  “Yeah, a little culvert got blocked.”

That and, apparently, a whole lot of rain.  The freeway is reopened.

But the state Department of Transportation’s work is not done.  Engineers are expected to be back out here Monday morning, helping determine the next steps.

©2024 Cox Media Group