Usually I’m on site within a day or two after a storm hits and receive claims in short order. Here in Washington my territory is consists of about the west 1/3 of the state and nearly all claims consist of damage due to the weight of snow.
About Christmas time the state had unusual amounts of snow, insured’s usually tell us about the 5’, or even more, of snow on the roof of their house. Then they had warmer weather and heavy rains which melted the snow adding to the rain water, hence the flooding that was all over the TV and news. Over 60 highways were closed due to flooding at the time we got stranded just south of Seattle.
Roads are now open for the most part but the damage from flooding is evident.
Justin and I were headed for claims 2 hours northeast of Seattle and after turning off of I-5 were on a two-lane road. We lost count of the times we had to stop because the road was down to one lane due to landslides or because part of the road had fallen down the hill. Once we counted 4 large landslides on one part of a hill, fortunately the hill wasn’t next to the road but was set back.
One section we were stopped at I complained to Justin that the closed section of road looked fine yet both ends were forced to wait while dump trucks dumped their gravel then the grader flattened the path, then the roller compacted it. All the while everyone waited, and then each side took a turn on the one lane being built.
Finally it was out turn to drive over the detour. On this stretch the hill on my left followed a sheer rock wall that ran along the road. We drove out over the new lane and as we turned to look we saw that the rock face was about 200’ high. On the top of the rock face the hill had fallen and was sitting on the edge of that face just waiting to come down. Well now, the detour really wasn’t so bad after all. I stepped on the gas and got out of there.
We passed by houses that we realized we’d seen on TV, the ones where the landsides ran across the road and on into the house. It is always amazing to see how powerful earth movement can be.
We stopped at a vista point where we could see Mt. St. Helens. If it isn’t volcanoes here then it is flooding from too much rain.
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