Clearing of I-5 slide debris near Bellingham will require hundreds of truckloads
The Washington State Department of Transportation still has no estimate for when northbound Interstate 5 will reopen following a March 19 landslide.
While the road has been cleared of most of the debris, there’s still a lot of loose trees and rock on the cliffside threatening to slide down. The road will remain closed for safety reasons until the side of the cliff can be cleared, according to WSDOT.
“Unfortunately, I do not have time for when the interstate will reopen,” Melissa Ambler with the Washington State Department of Transportation said Wednesday. “I can tell you we are working seven days a week to try and get the road open as quickly and safely as possible. The work we are doing out here is very methodical and systematic, and it takes time. We are not just removing the debris that came down off the slope from the interstate.”
The slide is more than 100 feet wide and sent an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 cubic yards (about 5,000 to 6,000 tons) of debris down 60 to 80 feet onto I-5, according to WSDOT. The debris removal trucks can carry about 30 tons per load, so it will likely take hundreds of truckloads to clear the slope, according to Brad Wyman with Interwest Construction Inc., the Burlington-based company contracted to clear the debris.
Workers are currently doing scaling work to take down unstable debris on the side of the slope. Scalers are tied to trees above the slope past the landslide area, and are hanging over the ledge with chainsaws and other tools, cutting down trees and removing rocks and anything else that may come down when clearing the slide.
“We have an unstable slope that we need to stabilize, and the way we do that takes a lot of time, and we start from the top and work our way down, removing unstable rock formations as well as trees and debris,” Ambler said. “That way when we get to the bottom we don’t have that risk of rocks or debris falling on our crew. That is one of the reasons we cannot open even one lane of (northbound) I-5, because the rocks and debris can easily fall down the slope and come onto either lane of traffic.”
Interwest Construction Inc. began clearing trees and debris Sunday, March 22. Interwest is the same company that cleared the Chuckanut Drive landslide from April 2025.
Wyman said the I-5 landslide may be the largest landslide his company has been contracted to clear — possibly second only to last year’s Chuckanut Drive slide, which took nearly two months to clear.
Wyman also said workers involved in the removal and repair process may be slowed by the weather. If there is heavy rain or strong wind, they won’t be able to scale back the side of the slope.
As previously reported by The Herald, drivers are being diverted off the freeway at North Lake Samish Road, exit 246. Southbound I-5 through the area remains open.
“We recommend people consider using [State Route] 9 and [State Route] 11/Chuckanut Drive as alternate routes,” WSDOT Communicator David Rasbach said in an email to The Bellingham Herald.
State Route 11 and other local roads are not suitable for freight traffic, according to Rasback. Freight drivers should use State Route 9 and State Route 542 as detours.
This story was originally published March 25, 2026 at 2:50 PM.
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