Hillsides crumble, potholes grow after relentless rain

SEATTLE -- Hillsides crumbled and trees fell.

“It was a horrendous howl coming, I heard the big snap,” Olympia resident Dan Womer said.

That snap was the sound of a tree crashing down onto a neighbor’s house.

“I just feel sorry for the people who live here,” Womer said.

Most homes across Western Washington may have weathered the storm without a scratch but the roads are a different story.

It's a bumpy ride until Maruiceo Dawson comes to the rescue.

“There is no hole we can’t fix,” Dawson said.

He’s a Seattle Department of Transportation employee -- but he and his co-workers call themselves pothole rangers

“When it rains, we have a lot more potholes -- from 2 inches to maybe 10 by 10,” Dawson said.

In West Seattle, streets are closed not because of potholes but landslides.

The hillside slid down in one Delridge neighborhood early Monday morning. Luckily, homes nearby were not affected.

“With climate change, we are getting more serious rain when it does hit,” West Seattle resident Mary Gunderson said.

She added that homes along Beach Drive Southwest are in a slide-prone area. She remembers the frenzy of evacuating from a landslide.

“I think the worst for us was the winter of '96 and '97,” Gunderson said.

A Seattle map pinpoints the trouble zones with different colors to show whether you live in a slide-prone area.

“Hopefully, those maps clearly show what the risks are here in West Seattle,” Gunderson said.

She's grateful for an amazing view outside her living room but Gunderson is aware that Mother Nature won’t always be so calm.