Floods to keep Mt. Rainier closed for weeks

Officials hope to reopen before Christmas

OLYMPIA, WASH. ? All of the damages remain to be added up, but officials already know that flood-shattered Mount Rainier National Park is weeks away from reopening.

“Our target at this point is to try and get open before Christmas,” said Kevin Bacher, park spokesman. “It will be 10 days to two weeks before we get access to Longmire, and there’s a lot of cleanup to do there.”

Heavy rains – 17 inches in two days – forced the park to close Monday, as creeks, streams and the Nisqually, Carbon and White rivers raged.

Park officials are still discovering damage, and an estimate of repair costs is still days away.

Damages include:

l A quarter-mile section of the Nisqually Road – just inside the park’s southwest entrance – was washed away.

l The main channel of the Nisqually River now threatens buildings at Longmire.

l Longmire itself is cut off from the southwest entrance, and power and sewer are out.

l The Sunshine Point Campground is gone, and the Nisqually River is now flowing through the area.

“Two or three campsites remain, but everything else is river now,” Bacher said.

l The Ohanapecosh Visitor Center was flooded and damaged.

l The Carbon River is flowing onto the road.

Mike Nichols, right, and Mike Lovell survey damage to Nichols' home Thursday along the Raging River in Preston, Wash.

Many trails, bridges and other areas were damaged, but much of that won’t be found until spring, Bacher said.

“We still haven’t gotten to many damaged areas,” Bacher said.

The first priority is to repair the quarter-mile of destroyed road between the southwest entrance and Longmire, Bacher said.

It’s likely that the Nisqually road will be rebuilt on the same route, Bacher said.

“We’re pretty much stuck where it is,” Bacher said. “The road already is against the bank of the hill, so, at this point, we’ll probably put it back where it was.”

The damage to the park will cost millions of dollars to repair, but the National Park Service has an emergency fund that is used to restore parks damaged during natural disasters, Bacher said.