A steep, heavily wooded mountain slope gave way on Monday night along a coastal stretch of the Zimovia Highway in Wrangell, Alaska, a fishing and logging town of about 2,000 residents 250 km south of the state capital of Juneau, officials said. One person was also injured.

The collapse of the mountainside followed a storm that swept Southeast Alaska with heavy rain and high winds in recent days, saturating soil and heightening landslide hazards across the region, according to Shannon McCarthy, a spokesman for the state’s transportation department.

The downhill cascade of mud and tree debris struck three homes and buried a 152m-wide section of the roadway, according to officials who briefed reporters on a video conference call yesterday.

Emergency personnel found the body of a female juvenile in an initial search for survivors on Monday night, and an adult woman was rescued from the debris yesterday morning. She was later listed in good condition, said Austin McDaniel a spokesman for the state’s public safety department.

Later yesterday, two more bodies were found in the area, McDaniel said in a statement.

Three more people – two juveniles and one adult – were believed missing after the search ended yesterday, he said.

Ground-level rescue operations were suspended overnight while geologists assessed the risk of additional landslide activity in the area, but yesterday portions of the slide zone were deemed stable enough to resume the search.

Aircraft and drones were also deployed in the search. An estimated 20 to 30 residents in the vicinity of the slide were evacuated, said Mason Villarma, acting borough manager.

The settlement of Wrangell, founded in the 19th century by Russians in a region inhabited for centuries by the Native Tlingit people and their ancestors, occupies the northern tip of Wrangell Island in the Alaska Panhandle region.

It has no connection with the Wrangell Mountains or Wrangell-St Elias National Park farther inland and well to the northwest.

Wrangell is linked to other towns in southeast Alaska by ferry and airplane. Its principal road is the Zimovia Highway, which runs along the west side of the island for 22km. The landslide struck at KM17, prompting an 8km closure of the highway, officials said.

McCarthy said several more slides struck Prince of Wales Island, south of Wrangell, but no casualties were reported there.