LILLIWAUP — One lane of U.S. Highway 101 was officially reopened Saturday afternoon, five days after a landslide forced officials to close the road south of the Mason-Jefferson county line.
The highway opened to alternating traffic at approximately 2 p.m. following several days of work by engineers and state Department of Transportation crews to secure the slide area, said Larry Evans, communication officer for the Washington State Patrol.
This is the second time in two months that section of highway has been closed due to a mudslide.
During a rainstorm last month, a short stretch of U.S. Highway 101 was closed for more than two hours following a mudslide three miles south of the county line.
Good news
The opening was good news for business owners and others in the area who count on the highway’s weekend traffic for their livelihoods.
“We get a lot of people through here on the weekends,” said Kyle Anglin, a dishwasher at the Halfway House Restaurant in Brinnon. “Traffic has definitely picked back up.”
The opening is also good news to residents of Jefferson and Clallam counties who commute to work on the highway, such as Anglin’s mother, Rose, who works at Wal-mart in Shelton, he said.
“She had to call in for the first couple days and say should couldn’t make it,” Anglin said.
Work crews installed jersey barriers in the hillside lane to keep vehicles away from slide areas Friday before opening the lane, Transportation officials said. Long-term repair of the slide area is expected to take several weeks to complete.
Prior to the highway’s reopening, motorists using U.S. Highway 101 between Brinnon and Lilliwaup were supposed to take a lengthy detour route across the Kitsap Peninsula, officials said.
But some local motorists decided to drive through the slide area along the northbound lane’s shoulder, which was open officially only to emergency traffic.
Previous slide
Last week’s slide isn’t as large as the one that closed the highway between Eldon and Lilliwaup for several months in 1999.
In February 1999, heavy rains saturated the ground above U.S. Highway 101 sending 1 million cubic tons of earth onto road between Eldon and Lilliwaup.
The highway remained closed for several months.
“That was really frustrating,” said Anglin. “This one wasn’t quite as bad.”
