Flooding Strands 1,000 Skiers on Mt. Baker in Washington

Widespread road washouts and flooding in western Washington state Sunday stranded as many as 1,000 skiers on Mt. Baker, imperiled mountain hikers and forced eight families from their homes.

Eighteen people were rescued from the mountains east of Seattle. Interstate 90, the state’s main east-west thoroughfare, was closed to eastbound traffic 48 miles east of Seattle, near Snoqualmie Pass, because of water over the road Sunday evening.

Flooding on mountain roads stranded hundreds of people in the ski resort town of Glacier, 28 miles east of Bellingham, and above the town on Mt. Baker, a 10,778-foot dormant volcano, said Neil Clement of the Whatcom County Department of Emergency Services.

Send Insulin for Diabetic

He said all were safely indoors for the night. Insulin for a diabetic person was hauled across the washout via tractor, and later as the gap increased, a “line gun” that fires a rope had to be used to get medicine to two people with epilepsy, Clement said.

Officials do not know how long the people will be stranded because no estimate has been made on when the river will crest, he said.

About 43 miles east of Seattle, a Forest Service crew used a backhoe and pickup truck to rescue 18 people who were among 27 hunters and hikers stranded along the upper reaches of the middle fork of the Snoqualmie, said Ron DeHart, a spokesman for the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest.

Nine Spend the Night

Nine people were spending the night in the area pending further rescue efforts today, while an undetermined number of others hiked out themselves, he said.

The National Weather Service issued flood warnings for 13 western Washington rivers, with some of the worst flooding expected along the Nooksack River downstream from Mt. Baker and the Snoqualmie River east and northeast of Seattle.

“We’ve never seen quite so much water out of the middle fork of the Snoqualmie this time of year. . . ,” DeHart said.