Woman escapes Trans-Canada Highway mudslide

A woman cheated death Wednesday afternoon when her car was slammed by a massive mudslide and rolled on the Trans-Canada Highway between Chilliwack and Hope.

The local woman suffered only minor harm, even though her car rolled twice, said Lynn Orstad, emergency program manager for the Fraser Valley Regional District.

“She got caught by the slide, her car flipped twice and she managed to get herself out,” Orstad told The Province.

“She had a bit of a bruised knee,” Orstad said. “She’s very lucky.”

Another woman, Tabitha Lindsay, managed to just escape the slide.

“It looked like a river coming down and my car just started gliding across the road. It wasn’t that bad yet so I got through it,” Lindsay said.

“First it was just water and then, as I got farther along, there was a lot of mud coming down,” she told CTV News. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Fire as well as search-and-rescue teams scoured the area, battling the deluge of mud and debris – said to be nine-metres deep and 80-m long – that tore through the stretch of highway near Popkum Road, about 20 kilometres east of Chilliwack, shortly after 10 a.m.

The rescue team, after finishing the ground search, planned to bring in heavy equipment to sift through the debris-laden highway “to determine if any vehicles or individuals are trapped under the slide,” estimated to be up to 6,000 cubic metres, said RCMP spokesman Sgt. Peter Thiessen.

“There could be, potentially, a vehicle in there and we wouldn’t be able to see it,” Thiessen said. “But, we haven’t got anything to indicate that that’s the case.”

No homes were damaged.

By this morning, westbound traffic on Highway 1 had reopened at Bridal Falls. Detours are still in effect eastbound via Highways 7 and 9.

The slide started at about 1,000 metres, in the high alpine above the highway.

Jeff Knight, a Ministry of Transportation spokesman, said the slide couldn’t have been anticipated.

“The high snowpack and very wet conditions combined with the terrain could all be factors,” he said.

Crews were working Wednesday night to open the highway, but Knight said it will take until late this evening or longer to clear the area.

Traffic was rerouted along Highways 7 and 9.

About 20 CN Rail cars were also caught in the slide. The container train, headed westbound toward Deltaport, was struck.

CN spokeswoman Kelli Svendsen said no cars were derailed and no CN workers were injured.

It appears the mud rolled slowly across the eastbound lanes before sliding down the hill into the westbound lanes.

Eastbound highway traffic ground to a halt by 5 p.m. at the Bridal Falls exit, where drivers reported waits of 2? hours to travel the approximately15 km from Chilliwack.

Motorists being rerouted off the Trans-Canada Highway at the exit expected that the detour on Highway 9 would take hours.

“This has been a nightmare,” said Marv Walter, who left Powell River en route to Alberta at 4:30 a.m.

“We should have been in Hinton by now,” Walter said while gazing at the long lineup of cars ahead of him.

Anny Pluum and her husband, Gunter, expected a quick ride back to their Shuswap home after dropping off relatives bound for Germany at the Vancouver International Airport on Wednesday morning.

“At this rate, they’ll probably get home before we do,” Anny Pluum laughed.

For Attorney-General Barry Penner – who grew up in Chilliwack and represents Chilliwack-Hope – the slide location came as little surprise.

“This is an area that’s prone to landslides,” said Penner, who was on site to view the damage.

In June 2000 a mudslide ripped through the same stretch of highway. No injuries were reported and both westbound and eastbound lanes were cleared within a day.

In January 2002, a more devastating mudslide, provoked by a winter storm, struck the Trans-Canada Highway and surrounding areas in Hope and Chilliwack.