Road to Mount St. Helens observatory closed indefinitely after ‘catastrophic’ landslide
Excerpt from The Olympian via Yahoo!:
A popular observatory near Mount St. Helens is indefinitely closed as engineers evaluate a massive landslide that blocked State Route 504.
Johnston Ridge Observatory, located within Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument, overlooks the north side of the mountain that collapsed in a 1980 eruption.
SR 504, which leads to the observatory, closed Sunday evening due to a debris slide that covered the upper portion of the roadway and washed away Spirit Lake Outlet Bridge. A dozen people and a dog had to be evacuated from the observatory by helicopter following the landslide.
It’s unclear when the roadway may reopen again, according to a Tuesday news release from the Washington State Department of Transportation. The debris fell about 2,000 feet from a hillside adjacent to the highway and caused “catastrophic damage” to the 85-foot bridge span, according to WSDOT.
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