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OLYMPIA, Wash. -- A powerful series of storms packing drenching rains and howling winds has killed five people in Washington.
Gov. Christine Gregoire said that in addition to two fatalities reported Monday afternoon in Grays Harbor County, a third man was killed in Mason County on Monday night when a building was hit by a mudslide.
Tuesday morning rescuers found an injured man and the bodies of two hikers who disappeared near Snow Lake near the Alpental ski area in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness area of Snoqualmie Pass.
A Bellevue couple and a friend -- all in their 30s -- were hiking on Saturday when an avalanche buried them, officials told KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reporter Alison Grande.
One man was able to dig himself out, but he couldn't find his wife and his friend. He crawled to his tent, where searchers found him Tuesday morning.
Meanwhile, Interstate 5 -- the main north-south highway in Western Washington that connects the Seattle area with Portland, Ore. -- is closed in Lewis County because of flooding. Water over I-5 is 10 feet deep. The impact on lost business from delayed truck traffic is estimated at $4 million a day, officials said.
Rescue helicopters plucked stranded people from an area near Rochester, in Thurston County. Chopper 7 shot video of the rescue of a Mennonite family at midday on Tuesday. See story, with video of the rescue.
Coast Guard officials in Seattle said the service's helicopters had rescued at least 130 people from areas surrounded by water -- in some cases from rooftops.
Gregoire, who declared a state of emergency Monday, touched down during a helicopter tour of flood damage in Southwest Washington to meet with victims seeking shelter at a Chehalis high school.
She gave them some words of encouragement and told them it was hard to comprehend how deep the water was until she saw it -- in some neighborhoods, the water was up to the rooflines.
The governor's helicopter flew over Lewis, Grays Harbor and Mason counties so far. In one area a Wal-Mart appeared as an island, its parking lot swamped by several feet of water.
The series of storms hit hardest on the Olympic Peninsula, Kitsap County and the southwest corner of the state. Rob Harper, a state emergency management spokesman, said at least 73,000 Western Washington residents were without electricity at some point Monday and more than 50,000 were still in the dark Tuesday
 D0N3 · Thu Jan 08, 2009 @ 01:01am · 1 Comments |
