Even with snow heaped outside, mudslides stretching into the roadways and the power out for the sixth day, the Rockport Post Office was open Monday.

The lighting was dim and it took three propane heaters to get the place bearable, even then acting Postmaster Alice Berner’s breath showed in the chill.

No mail made it to Rockport for two days last week, and moving the mail from town to Concrete and the outside required a detour along Highway 530.

Like the post office, the rest of town is without power and could remain that way until tonight or longer, and like the mail, residents of Rockport have had a tough time getting in and out of town lately with Highway 20 closed and Highway 530 blocked at times.

Those who live farther east, in Marblemount and the Sauk Valley, have also been without power and partially cut off.

Last Wednesday’s three major Highway 20 mudslides spewed down the hillside in what transportation officials called a “Mud Wall” onto a quarter-mile stretch just east of Concrete. The slides swept tree limbs, rock and lots of mud across the roadway and kept on going past the shoulder and down a hillside to the river, carrying a stretch of guardrail and several power poles with it.

The state Department of Transportation has worked to remove the debris ever since, and with 800 cubic yards cleared off the road so far, another 500 cubic yards remains to be hauled from the roadside, DOT spokesman Dustin Terpening said Monday.

A stretch of the hillside stands barren, just a few teetering trees at the top and then a sheer vertical plummet to piles of mud and debris along the shoulder of the highway. Emergency vehicles were given access to the still messy stretch Saturday, and a contractor for Puget Sound Energy began assessing the situation and moving in equipment Sunday, Terpening said.

Crews for Potelco, a contractor hired by PSE to replace the downed poles and power lines, began work at 7 a.m. Monday and will work continuously until power is restored to Rockport, Marblemount and other communities east of Concrete, Potelco foreman Henrik Nielsen said.

If everything goes according to plan, power should be back on Tuesday night, he said. But not everything was going smoothly Monday afternoon.

The ground was so saturated that as soon crews drilled holes for new power poles, sodden earth filled them back in. But with eight poles to install and about 900 customers waiting for power, Nielsen said the crews would “get it done, some way, some how. We’ll bring into a huge excavator if we have to.”

Larry Dunning lives just east of the downed power lines, but his proximity makes him no closer to getting the power back on. Like those in Rockport and Marblemount, he is at the mercy of those downed poles on Highway 20.

He owns three houses there populated with three generations of relatives. The past six days have required a lot of wood chopping and carrying, he said, but he has a good attitude about it — and two generators.

“This slide is not a big thing,” he said as he walked down the road to ask a nearby power crew for an update. “It happens every year. The power being out is the only thing that makes it hard.”

Others have had a more trouble dealing with the loss of electricity, the road closures and the snow, which still buries some cars and homes upriver.

Marvin Kempf stopped his drive along Highway 530 from Rockport to take photos of a huge mudslide, which washed the shoulder of the road into a pool of floodwaters and orange cones on one side of the street and a jumble of branches, tree rootballs and guardrail on the other. Yes the slides are bad he said, but he cannot see why it has taken so long for the power companies to get to work and to tell residents what is going on.

PSE spokesman Roger Thompson said Monday morning that the company has taken calls from customers and called them to deliver recorded updates. But it was not until Saturday, he said, that PSE crews could get to the downed lines to assess the situation.

Crews may get power back on today, he said, but it is possible there is still damage yet to be found on some of the branches off the Highway 20 power line.

The Sauk-Suiattle Indian Reservation, about 13 miles south of Rockport, also was cut off for a day by high water over Highway 9 to the south and mudslides to the north.

Water over Highway 9 receded after a day, said Tribal Council Chairwoman Cynthia Harris, who crossed the roadway just before it was closed. The tribe has about 200 members, but not all live on the reservation, which is near the Skagit-Snohomish county line.

The closest mudslide blocking Highway 530 was about half a mile north of the reservation, and crews cleared one lane of that highway, reopening it Sunday night.

“We actually made it through quite nicely,” Harris said.

The most hair-raising event occurred last Wednesday in Concrete when a super-saturated hillside collapsed, crushing the home of Diane Bergsma while she was inside. Her neighbor, Jack Freeman, saw it happen.

He knew Bergsma was inside and ran to help, crawling under live power lines, tearing back shingles to get to her and banging on the roof and screaming her name.

“I could hear her screaming my name back,” he said. “… It was like something out of a horror movie. All I could see was her hand.”

On Monday, Freeman returned to the neighborhood, though the town has put it under a mandatory evacuation order.

He stood where he did Wednesday and looked at the crushed house, the Ford Mustang that held up the roof perhaps saving Bergsma’s life, and the tiny hole through which the recliner Bergsma’s was sitting in is visible and through which she was pulled to safety.

“I cannot come up here and look at that hole without almost crying,” Freeman said.

• Elliott Wilson can be reached at 360-416-2147 or at .

•Staff writer Marta Murvosh contributed to this report.