Alaska landslide cuts off road access to residents, tourists

Efforts were underway Monday to clear a road where dozens of fully grown evergreen trees as well as rocks and dirt toppled into an Alaska bay, covering the roadway and cutting off road access for scores of people.

There were no injuries in the Saturday evening landslide about 800 metres south of downtown Seward, City Manager Janette Bower said.

A private contractor handled the removal process and planned to use heavy equipment to clear the debris at the top first, working down to the roadway, Bower said. Part of the work has created additional slides within the original slide, slowing the process.

The slide measured 61 metres long by 91 metres wide and could take up to two weeks to clear, she estimated.

The slide has prevented about 200 residents and tourists from reaching Seward. To the south of the slide there is a tiny community called Lowell Point, on the west side of Resurrection Bay, a 27-kilometre long body of water that leads to the Gulf of Alaska.

"There are a lot of cool things going on," Bower said of efforts to make sure those stranded are able to get back and forth to Seward, including a water taxi and landing crafts. "They're helping. [There is] a lot of great community coming-together to get things done."

Before the Seward landslide, traffic was stopped nearby because of falling rocks in the area. A police officer and a city loader were on scene to move rocks, some of which were the size of basketballs. 

One rock, with a diameter of about 1.22 metres landed near the loader, said Josh Gray, who was with his wife, Nikki Holmes, watching sea lions float in the bay.

They drove about 200 kilometres south from Anchorage for a birthday party on the other side of the slide. They had just gone to a grocery store for ingredients for the batter to deep fry the fresh halibut their friends had caught earlier in the day.

Their friends made it through the rock fall area 15 minutes earlier.

Gray said all of a sudden, the loader began backing up, and he believes the driver "started to get a sense that things are still pretty active," he said. 

Gray estimated the loader was moving at maybe six kilometres per hour but was able to clear the path "just in time."

"Things really picked up quickly," he said, just before the slope seemed to collapse before his eyes.

State geologist assessing conditions

Seward has not had heavy rain recently or other normal conditions that would trigger a landslide, prompting the state geologist to visit the site and assess conditions, Bower said. Torrential downpours in December 2020 triggered landslides in Haines that killed two people.

"You can hear the whooshing of the rocks and earth," Gray said.

"As soon as the trees started falling, then we all knew it was like getting serious," Gray said.

He looked up the slope and saw the fully grown evergreen trees falling "like dominoes" down the slope and toppling into Resurrection Bay.

"That was pretty alarming," Gray said.

"My wife was smart to just run back to the car," he said. "I was dumb enough to be there with phone, videoing it."

He eventually got in the car and they retreated to the mainland, where they saw the scope of the slide.

"You know, our plans were minorly inconvenienced for the evening, but there's a lot of residents that live out there and businesses that operate out there that are going to be impacted for a long time, so that's pretty unfortunate," he said.

Others also caught the dramatic slide on their phones. Besides posting it widely on social media, they also shared it with city officials.

"We're really thankful for that video because that was able to confirm that there was no one in the slide," Bower said.