Another Felida-area mudslide — the fourth this rainy season — has disrupted service along BNSF Railway’s major north-south corridor between Portland and Seattle.
The latest landslide occurred at about 10:20 a.m. Tuesday.
Amtrak passenger rail service will be suspended for two days to ensure the slope is stable and that the safety of passengers can be assured.
Spokesman Marc Magliari said Amtrak will provide charter bus service between Portland and Seattle for the next two days, as it has done following previous landslides in the area. Amtrak Cascades offers four daily round-trips between Seattle and Portland, in addition to the long-haul Coast Starlight operating between Seattle and Los Angeles.
BNSF spokesman Gus Melonas said freight trains began moving through the area of the slide by the early afternoon.
Saturated soil
Melonas said the earth came off a saturated 65-foot-tall slope above the main line, about a half-mile south of a different slide two weeks ago. The movement of mud, rock and trees covered the closest of two sets of tracks to a depth of 3 feet and a length of 20 feet, Melonas said.
“There are 60 trains that use this route daily,” he said. “Any disruption of service is significant. In terms of the mass volume from the land, these have been relatively minor in depth compared to slides we’ve experienced over the years.”
He said the main line north of Seattle has been disrupted by at least 10 slides during this rainy season.
Melonas attributed Tuesday’s landslide to heavy rain over the past two days, preceded by record cold.
“We’ve had freezing, thawing,” he said. “All of this leads to what we’ve experienced over the last three weeks.”
Vancouver officially recorded slightly more than 2 inches of rain over 36 hours beginning Monday. That’s nearly half the total recorded for the entire month of February.
“It’s heavy saturation at the top (of the slope),” Melonas said. “With the continuous water pouring at the top of a cliff, it’s just inevitable that there will be some give.”
He said the slide was detected by a fence designed to monitor earth movement in slide-prone areas.
