Closed Snoqualmie Cutting Off Customers

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Story Published: Jan 8, 2009 at 5:25 PM PST

By Sade Malloy

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Ellensburg -- Every day the Pass is closed means thousands lost to companies, the total loss for the state is well over a billion by this point.

Seven thousand trucks make it over the Cascades every day but when the Pass is closed truckers set up shop along exit 109, that's what Doug Lessard did. "I came over from Oregon, Pendleton yesterday there was about five trucks on the side over there, it's been a bad Winter so far," he tells Action News.

Lessard was supposed to be in British Columbia Thursday morning but now he's hunkered down in his camper. The Finseth family is stranded too, they were trying to make it home to the Westside. Russ Finseth says, "We knew this was as far as we could go so we came here last night to get as close as possible."

You'd think with a restaurant right off I-90 and a parking lot full of stranded drivers business would be booming for restaurants, but the Ranch House says they're losing money. "We might get a sudden bunch of people that run in but the whole rest of the day it'll be quiet they're announcing on the news the pass is closed so no one is passing through," says Mary Kraft, Ranch House.

No one is passing through because this is the same area where there's flooding. So people aren't coming in if they don't have to and that means the Ranch House will see about half the customers they normally do.

"How do you guys try to make that up?"
"We just pray for Spring," says Mary Kraft, Ranch House.
And hope the rest of Winter is as mild as first predicted.

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