A woman traveling northbound this morning on Highway 99 slipped off the road near the Salmon Creek Bridge and slammed into the Thunder Reef Dive Shop, 12104 N.E. Highway 99.
Slick, icy roads and heavy fog contributed to more than 30 crashes Wednesday morning, with northern Clark County hit especially hard.
Clark County Fire & Rescue was seemingly traveling from one crash to the next between 7 a.m. and 8:30 a.m., according to emergency radio traffic monitored at The Columbian.
The most serious of the wrecks may have been a two-vehicle collision that resulted in one car being overturned and the other sliding into a ditch in the 31300 block of Northeast 95th Avenue, north of Battle Ground just off of Mason Creek Road.
There were no injuries in the crash, said Dean Lange, a division chief with Clark County Fire & Rescue. In fact, the department did not handle an injury crash Wednesday morning, “just a lot of people sliding off the road,” Lange said.
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Clark County Fire District 6 responded to a crash at about 5:30 a.m. in Hazel Dell.
An unidentified woman there went into a slide on the Salmon Creek Bridge and slammed into a building, according to a news bulletin.
The press release from Dawn Johnson, a department spokeswoman, said the woman was traveling northbound on Highway 99 when the vehicle slid, crossed all lanes of traffic, traveled down a small embankment and crashed into the Thunder Reef Dive Shop, 12104 N.E. Highway 99.
The woman was not injured and declined medical treatment.
The business was closed and there was no one inside at the time of the crash. Damage to the building appeared to be limited.
“It’s important for drivers to remember that even if roads are not icy, bridges and overpasses can be,” Johnson said. “This is because bridges and overpasses are more exposed to the cold air.”
A dispatcher summed the morning up: “A lot of ice calls. A lot of crashes.”
Jeff Mize of Clark County Public Works said three de-icing trucks and four sanding trucks began tending to roads at 6 a.m. Crews focused on the Interstate 5 corridor and the Daybreak Park area, Mize said.
Mize urged drivers to exercise caution when driving conditions are less than ideal.
Emergency dispatchers with 911 and the Washington State Patrol said later that the problem didn’t continue into Wednesday evening.
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