(The Associated Press circulated the following on January 31.)
OAKRIDGE, Ore. — More than 2 feet of new snow has fallen at the site of a landslide that buried train tracks outside of Oakridge last month, further delaying any reopening of the passenger and freight route.
Both the northbound and southbound Coast Starlight runs that carry travelers from Seattle to Los Angeles are canceled through Feb. 14, Amtrak said in news release this week. Other regional Amtrak trains and buses will continue serving California, Oregon and Washington.
A broad section of hillside fell almost two weeks ago, obliterating thousands of feet of Union Pacific-track under a snowy mound of mud and trees more than 20 feet deep.
Union Pacific spokeswoman Zoe Richmond said the new snow has slowed cleanup efforts, making it difficult to predict when the tracks might be cleared. “We’re at the mercy of the weather, so we’re not putting a date on it,” Richmond said.
Railroad and contract crews with dozens of excavators, dump trucks and other heavy machinery are working to move more than 2.3 million cubic yards of mud and debris, an amount the size of a football field, reaching as high as the 108-story Sears Tower in Chicago, Richmond said.
Workers have recovered about 700,000 board feet of timber, a mix of Douglas fir and cedar trees that Union Pacific loaded onto rail cars to haul away.
Some of the wood will be put back into streams to create both resting and spawning habitat for salmon and bull trout, Willamette National Forest Service spokeswoman Judy McHugh said. The rest will be available for purchase through a competitive bid process.
Part of the slide began in an area clear-cut in the early 1990s, but Forest Service geologists who have looked at the area doubt that it caused the slide. It will, however, take a more thorough assessment of the slope to confirm the initial analysis, said Mark Leverton, a Forest Service geologist on the Middle Fork Ranger District.