A small stretch of Northwest Pacific Highway near La Center gradually caved in last week, creating a traffic nuisance for, likely, the next several months.
The roughly 100-foot portion of the highway just north of Northwest Wellman Road closed Tuesday afternoon after snow and heavy rain caused a washout underneath the road. A 17-foot gap opened between the thin layer of pavement above and rushing water below, before some of it finally caved in Thursday, according to Clark County Public Works.
“This is a significant road, and it is a significant closure. It’s going to take time to fix,” Clark County Public Works spokesman Jeff Mize said. “It will have a significant effect on the surrounding community.”
Concrete panels kept the road intact, but it was sinking before Thursday, Mize said.
The county is still deciding how to fix the road. A 30-inch culvert that currently sits under it will likely be replaced with a bigger one, leading to a longer time frame than was announced Tuesday, Mize said.
“We are moving toward a complete fix rather than a temporary fix,” Mize said. “A permanent rebuild would be far less disruptive on the community, as well as a better use of public resources.”
That will likely increase emergency response times for residents living near a 3-mile span of the highway north and west of the closure.
Clark County Fire & Rescue’s La Center station is located southwest about 2 miles away — a roughly five-minute drive. To reach houses just north and west of the damaged road, responders from the station would need to use an alternative route, adding at least another 10 minutes, Chief John Nohr said.
With the closure, a unit from Woodland will likely be the first to arrive in emergencies, but the response time will still be at least three minutes longer, Nohr said.
“If we’ve got critical patients, that really puts us in a bad spot,” Nohr said. “It’s a low call volume area, but it still means that (a handful of) calls may be affected by that. If you’re one of the folks living on a road affected by a lot of that, it would be important to you, I think.”
For those driving southbound into the area, Northwest Eddy Rock Road is the last place to turn before coming to the closed section. For northbound traffic, Northwest Wellman Road is the final turning point.
Concrete barriers, barricades, cones and hazard tape are blocking off the area. While onlookers have ventured there to survey the damage, it is not recommended due to the unstable surface, Mize said.
