A landslide in Ketchikan Sunday night trapped nearly a dozen people on a remote stretch of road north of the city.
Borough Mayor Rodney Dial said the slide happened around 8 p.m. Sunday on Revilla Road past Ward Lake. There are few houses in that area, but it is near a paintball field and popular hunting areas — and Revilla Road is the only way in or out.
“We had six vehicles out there containing eight passengers on the other side of the slide area. Fortunately, we didn’t have any injuries,” said Dial.
Dial said that by 9 p.m. the state Department of Transportation, the Ketchikan Volunteer Rescue Squad, Ketchikan Public Facilities, and others were on scene with a backhoe and a loader to remove debris from the road to free the people trapped on the other side.
Dial said that by midnight, the backhoe was able to clear enough of a path through the debris field that most of the trapped victims could leave their vehicles behind and walk across to safety.
“They walked through and were picked up on this side,” said Jerry Kiffer of the Ketchikan Volunteer Rescue Squad. “There’s one family that still remains behind the landslide, but they’ve decided they’re just going to hole up and stay in place and wait for DOT to get it cleared up.”
The family that decided to stay with their vehicle was Janet Lydia and her husband and two kids. Lydia said in a text message Monday morning that they were on their way back from hunting when they ran into the slide. It was at least 20 feet across and blocking both lanes with downed trees and mud. Lydia said that’s where they ran into the other people trapped on the far side of the slide with them.
“Five people hiked through the mess to go home last night,” she said, but her family didn’t want to “pack their young kids through the deep mess.” They chose to wait for the debris to be cleared but according to Lydia, they actually weren’t the only ones that stayed overnight.
“Two others in a truck are still out the road further,” she said. “We last saw them at Harriet Hunt Creek this morning when we finally went for a little drive.”
Lydia said that on Monday morning, they could hear people on the town side of the slide clearing debris with chainsaws – a group of citizen volunteers, Alaska State Troopers, DOT, and others – and that her husband was currently doing the same on their side of the road.
The Ketchikan Borough said in a press release that a geologist was arriving Monday morning from Juneau to assess the stability of the hillside, roadway, and slide area before they begin larger-scale debris removal. As of 9 a.m. on Monday, North Tongass Fire and EMS Responders were still on scene. Kiffer said Ketchikan Volunteer Rescue Squad stood down but remains on standby since they believed everyone was accounted for.
The borough said that after all vehicles and passengers have made it safely to the Ketchikan side, DOT will close Revilla Road to through traffic at the North Tongass Highway junction, which includes access to Ward Lake.
This slide comes a month and a half after the fatal landslide near downtown Ketchikan killed one person and destroyed multiple homes.
The conditions on Sunday were somewhat similar to that late August Sunday when the fatal Third Avenue landslide came down over the White Cliff neighborhood. Following a mostly clear, bluebird Saturday, the rain came down hard and lasted the entire day.
Ketchikan is still recovering physically and emotionally from the downtown landslide that claimed the life of community member and city employee Sean Griffin in late August. Third Avenue Bypass was reopened about a week ago after being buried beneath that slide. During Sunday’s rain storm that preceded the Revilla Road slide, officials closed the Bypass again to monitor the slide area, a long rocky stretch that now looms above the road like a scar. They wanted to see if the heavy rains would cause any further danger. Engineers evaluated the slide area at 6 a.m. Monday morning and found no hazardous conditions. It was reopened for public use.
There is very little cell phone service north of town in Sunday’s Revilla Road slide area. Dial said that if you find yourself in a situation like this, it helps to have a backup form of communication.
“Just in those remote areas where there’s a lack of communication, it can really benefit an individual to have some ability to contact somebody and say, ‘My car broke down,’ or ‘We got hurt, send help.’” Dial said. “And so we would just really ask that people – if you’re going to go into very rural locations without communication capability – consider either some way of taking some emergency communication device with you, or at least leaving a trip plan with family members so they know when to expect you back, and if you haven’t arrived by that time, to go ahead and contact authorities.”
