Nearly five days after slow-moving slide, SR 530 reopens

State Route 530 reopened a day early nearly Oso after a slow-moving slide prompted recommended evacuations over the weekend.

The closure – near the site of the deadly slide northeast of Seattle in 2014 – created driving difficulties for residents and travelers in Darrington, Oso, and Arlington over the last few days.

Snohomish County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Shari Ireton told KIRO 7 News on Friday that people who noticed cracks on a road near Oso called officials. Ireton said a state geologist who went to the area about 1.5 miles west of the 2014 slide found several sites where significant cracks in the slope indicated movement.

Occupants of 11 homes were asked to evacuate. No injuries or damage to private property have been reported, but road damage included cracks of 6 inches (15 centimeters) last Tuesday that grew to 2 feet (60 centimeters) by the weekend.

Landslides are common in rainy Washington state and there have been an unusually high number of them recently following months of wet weather, said Joe Smillie, a spokesman with the Department of Natural Resources.

Smillie said there have been about 100 landslides in northeastern Washington over the last month as heavy mountain snowpack melted.

Heavy recent rains probably contributed to the ground movement, authorities said. It happened in an area with a history of slides going back hundreds if not thousands of year, he said.

The location is about 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) away from the site of the March 22, 2014 mudslide that was the deadliest in U.S. history. About 270 million cubic feet (7.6 million cubic meters) of earth slid down across the Stillaguamish River, spreading out for more than half a mile (one kilometer).

After the 2014 slide, a portion of State Route 530 was buried under as much as 20 feet (6.1 meters) of muck and was closed for over two months.

Cox Media Group