Thread: 108 PEOPLE MAY BE MISSING AFTER WASHINGTON MUDSLIDE

BREAKING NEWS

AUTHORITIES SAY 108 PEOPLE MAY BE MISSING AFTER WASHINGTON MUDSLIDE


Authorities confirm 8 dead in Washington state mudslide

Published March 24, 2014 FoxNews.com

Hopes of finding survivors of a massive mudslide are fading, after authorities in a rural part of Washington state said there are no "signs of life" at the scene of the debris field, where eight bodies were recovered over the weekend.

The mudslide injured eight others, and caused as many as 18 others to vanish Saturday.

Snohomish County sheriff's Lt. Rob Palmer said four more bodies were discovered late Sunday to bring the total number of fatalities to eight.

Earlier in the day, authorities said one body had been found on the debris field. Three people were already confirmed dead on Saturday.

Authorities had said that at least 18 people were missing, but that number was given before the discovery of the additional bodies and investigators had described that number as "fluid." Searchers had planned to continue looking through the night into Monday morning.

The 1-square-mile mudslide that struck Saturday morning also critically injured several people and destroyed about 30 homes.

Crews were able to get to the muddy, tree-strewn area after geologists flew over in a helicopter and determined it was safe enough for emergency responders and technical rescue personnel to search for possible survivors, Snohomish County Fire District 21 Chief Travis Hots said Sunday evening.

"We didn't see or hear any signs of life out there today," he said, adding that they did not search the entire debris field, only drier areas safe to traverse. "It's very disappointing to all emergency responders on scene."

Despite that, Hots said crews were still in a "search and rescue mode. It has not gone to a recovery mode at this time."

He said the search would continue until nightfall, at which time conditions become too dangerous.

Before crews could get onto the debris field late Sunday morning, they looked for signs of life by helicopter. Authorities initially said it was too dangerous to send rescuers out on foot.

Rescuers' hopes of finding more survivors were buoyed late Saturday when they heard people yelling for help, but they were unable to reach anyone. The soupy mud was so thick and deep that searchers had to turn back.

"We have this huge square-mile mudflow that's basically like quicksand," Hots said Sunday.

The slide wiped through what neighbors described as a former fishing village of small homes -- some nearly 100 years old.

As the search for the missing continued, authorities said some may have been able to get out on their own. The number unaccounted for could change because some people may have been in cars and on roads when the slide hit just before 11 a.m. Saturday, Hots said.

Officials described the mudslide as "a big wall of mud and debris." It blocked about a mile of State Route 530 near the town of Oso, about 55 miles north of Seattle. It was reported to be about 15 feet deep in some areas.

Authorities believe the slide was caused by ground made unstable by recent heavy rainfall.

Washington Gov. Jay Inslee described the scene as "a square mile of total devastation" after flying over the disaster area midday Sunday. He assured families that everything was being done to find their missing loved ones.

"There is a full scale, 100 percent aggressive rescue going on right now," said Inslee, who proclaimed a state of emergency.

The slide blocked the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River. With the water pooling behind the debris, authorities worried about downstream flooding and issued an evacuation notice Saturday. The water had begun to seep through the blockage Sunday afternoon, alleviating some concerns.

Snohomish County officials said Sunday that residents could return home during daylight hours. Even though the evacuation had been lifted, Inslee urged residents to remain alert.

The National Weather Service issued a flash flood watch for Snohomish County through Monday afternoon.

Shari Ireton, a spokeswoman for the Snohomish County sheriff's office, said Sunday that a total of eight people were injured in the slide.

A 6-month-old boy and an 81-year-old man remained in critical condition Sunday morning at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. Hospital spokeswoman Susan Gregg said two men, ages 37 and 58, were in serious condition, while a 25-year-old woman was upgraded to satisfactory condition.

Bruce Blacker, who lives just west of the slide, doesn't know the whereabouts of six neighbors.

"It's a very close knit community," Blacker said as he waited at an Arlington roadblock before troopers let him through. There were almost 20 homes in the neighborhood that was destroyed, he said.

Search-and-rescue help came from around the region, including the Washington State Patrol and the Army Corps of Engineers. More than 100 were at the scene.

Evacuation shelters were set up at Post Middle School in Arlington and the Darrington Community Center.

Dane Williams, 30, who lives a few miles from the mudslide, spent Saturday night at a Red Cross shelter at the Arlington school.

He said he saw a few "pretty distraught" people at the shelter who didn't know the fate of loved ones who live in the stricken area.

"It makes me want to cry," Williams said Sunday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/03/24...f-office-says/

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108 names on list of missing or unaccounted in Washington mudslide Boston.com - ‎19 minutes ago‎ A demolished house sits in the mud on Highway 530, Sunday, March 23, 2014 the day after a giant landslide occurred near Oso, Wash...

BREAKING NEWS: 6 more deaths confirmed in Washington mudslide

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• Today at 5:04 PM

Sheriff says six more deaths have been confirmed in massive Washington mudslide, bringing total to 14.

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Washington state mudslide death toll climbs to 14 with up to 176 missing

Reuters

- ‎5 minutes ago‎

ARLINGTON, Washington (Reuters) - The death toll from a devastating weekend mudslide in Washington state climbed to 14 people on Monday as six more bodies were found, while the number reported missing continued to swell two days after the tragedy, ...

BREAKING NEWS: 10 more deaths confirmed in Washington mudslide
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• Today at 7:08 PM

Ten more deaths have been confirmed in massive Washington mudslide, bringing total to 24, officials say.

More on this story: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/03/25/24-killed-in-big-wash-mudslide-officials-say/



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This is truly tragic and should bear more interest than the plane. Thank you JohnDoe2 for posting these updates.

Seattle mudslide: 1999 report warned of 'catastrophic failure' at site

DateMarch 25, 2014 - 6:57PM
Ken Armstrong

Dozens missing after deadly US mudslide

RAW VIDEO: the number of individuals unaccounted for after Saturday's deadly mudslide in north-western US state of Washington, has risen from 18 to 108.

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Seattle: Since the 1950s, geological reports on the hill that buckled during the weekend in Washington state's Snohomish County have included pessimistic analyses and the occasional dire prediction. But no language seems more prescient than what appears in a 1999 report filed with the US Army Corps of Engineers, warning of "the potential for a large catastrophic failure".

That report was written by Daniel Miller and his wife Lynne Rodgers Miller. When she saw the news of the mudslide, she knew right away where the land had given way. Her husband knew, too.

"We've known it would happen at some point," he told The Seattle Times on Monday. "We just didn't know when."

Rescue workers at one of the number of homes that were wrecked by the mudslide. Photo: AP

Daniel Miller, a geomorphologist, also documented the hill's landslide conditions in a report written in 1997 for the Washington Department of Ecology and the Tulalip Tribes. He knows the hill's history, having collected reports and memos from the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s and 1990s.

He has a half-dozen manila folders stuffed with maps, slides, models and drawings, all telling the story of an unstable hillside that has defied efforts to shore it up.

That's why he could not believe what he saw in 2006, when he returned to the hill within weeks of a landslide that crashed into and plugged the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River, creating a new channel that threatened homes on a street called Steelhead Drive. Instead of homes being vacated, he saw carpenters building new ones.

"Frankly, I was shocked that the county permitted any building across from the river," he said. "We've known that it's been failing," he said of the hill. "It's not unknown that this hazard exists."

Brenda Neal, right, looks at aerial photos of the landslide for her missing husband's car. Photo: Reuters

Dr Miller has done analyses for the Environmental Protection Agency and US Forest Service, and was hired by King County in the 1990s to map out its geologically hazardous areas.

His perspective stands in contrast to what John Pennington, head of Snohomish County's Department of Emergency Management, said at a news conference Monday. "It was considered very safe," Mr Pennington said. "This was a completely unforeseen slide. This came out of nowhere."

The 2006 slide took place in winter, on January 25. Three days later, as the new channel cut the land, "residents and agency staff reported the eerie sound of trees constantly snapping as the river pushed them over," wrote the Stillaguamish Tribe's Natural Resource Department on its website. But the sound of construction competed with the sound of snapping trees.

Search and rescue personnel continue working the area that was hit. Photo: AP

"They didn't even stop pounding nails," said Tracy Drury, an environmental engineer and applied geomorphologist who assessed the area with Dr Miller soon after the landslide. "We were surprised."

At least five homes were built in 2006 on Steelhead Drive, according to Snohomish County records. The houses were granted "flood hazard permits" that required them to be jacked up 30 to 60 centimetres above "base flood elevation" according to county building-permit records.

Another home was built in the neighbourhood in 2009.

Snohomish County Executive John Lovick and Public Works Director Steve Thomsen said on Monday night they were not aware of the 1999 report. "A slide of this magnitude is very difficult to predict," Mr Thomsen said. "There was no indication, no indication at all."

An aerial view of the massive mudslide. Photo: AP

Irvin Wood and his wife Judith, of Bothell, owned the last home permitted in the slide zone, a double-wide mobile home they bought and moved onto a forested lot last year. The Woods used the property as a weekend getaway, sometimes bringing their grandchildren. But they were not there on Saturday when the mudslide wiped out the mobile home and swept away neighbours who are now missing and presumed dead.

Mr Wood, who has owned other property in the area for decades, said "nobody was warning anybody" about the probability of a massive landslide. But he said it was "an unrealistic expectation" for people to think the government could prevent such disasters.

"That's like saying the river is going to flood," Mr Wood said. "If the hillsides were going to slough away, they were going to slough away. That's kind of what happens around here."

Darrington High School students make posters following the deadly mudslide. Photo: AP

The hill that collapsed last weekend is referred to by geologists with different names, including Hazel Landslide and Steelhead Haven Landslide, a reference to the hillside's constant movement. Some residents, according to a 1967 Seattle Times story, referred to it simply as "Slide Hill".

After two landslides on the hill - one in 1949, another in 1951 - two state agencies, the Department of Game and the Department of Fisheries, commissioned a report from Seattle engineering firm William D. Shannon and Associates.

The 1949 slide was nearly 300 metres long and took out about 790 metres of the river bank, according to the Shannon report. The scarp - the face of the cliff where the slide broke away - was 21 metres tall in places. There were no injuries and no reports of structural damage.

In 1951, debris from the denuded slide area formed a mudflow that partially dammed the river. The Shannon report noted that the two creeks in the area are known as "Slide Creek" and "Mud Flow Creek."
The Shannon report was not commissioned out of safety concerns but over complaints that sediment from the slide was clogging the river and degrading the salmon fishery. The report concluded that a main cause of the slides is the river eroding the "toe" of a previous slide, which supports the millions of tons of dirt behind it, like someone with their back against a bulging door. Eventually, the toe would fail and gravity would pull the mountain down again.

Asked if there was a way to control the slides, Mr Shannon wrote that one possibility would be permanently diverting the river. He also suggested building berms and reinforcing the slide area. However, he noted that a professor he had hired to look at the issue from a geological standpoint, Howard Coombs of the University of Washington, concluded that any fix would likely be temporary and that the slide area could be expected to expand.

In 1969, a geologist with the state Department of Natural Resources, Gerald Thorsen, submitted a memorandum after visiting the site of the slide. He explained that "aerial photographs taken as far back as 1932 show the river has cut at this clay bank for many years." He noted that a 45-metre section of the scarp wall had caved, resulting in a dangerous mudflow of the same sort - albeit small in comparison - that rescuers are facing today.

"Travel across the slide surface is extremely treacherous," he wrote, "because of hidden 'pockets' of saturated material that will not support a man's weight."

Saturday's monster slide left a scarp of nearly , 183 metres about nine times taller than the 1949 slide and four times taller than the one in 1967.

The 2006 slide disrupted risk-mitigation projects already in the works.

Officials planned to move the river's flow 130 metres to the south, providing more buffer at the base of the hillside. The landslide, however, moved the river 222 metres.

In the northern summer of 2006, crews installed a 396-metre "crib wall" of boom logs - some more than 90 centimetres in diameter - anchored with 4000 kilogram concrete blocks every 15 metres.

It was no match for this week's mudslide.

"We always thought there was a possibility that a catastrophic event could come," said Pat Stevenson, environmental manager of the Stillaguamish Tribe. "We were hoping that wouldn't happen."

Mr Drury, the environmental engineer, and Mr Stevenson said there were discussions over the years about whether to buy out the property owners in the area, but those talks never developed into serious proposals.

"I think we did the best that we could under the constraints that nobody wanted to sell their property and move," Mr Drury said.

Mr Stevenson said county officials who approved development seemed more focused on whether the homes were in flood areas than on the risk of a landslide.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/seattle-...#ixzz2x2fc6CmM

Missing or Unaccounted After Mudslide Down to 90

NBCNews.com - 8 minutes ago

Number of Missing or Unaccounted-For in Mudslide Drops to 90

BY M. ALEX JOHNSON AND GIL AEGERTER

The number of people missing or unaccounted for after the massive landslide in Washington state has dropped from 176 to 90, search officials said Wednesday night.

Ever since the avalanche of dirt and debris buried the small community 55 miles east of Seattle in mud on Saturday, the number of people who weren't accounted for had fluctuated as high as 250.

The new number was determined after authorities cross-referenced reports of missing persons and a registry of people who'd reported they were alive and well, John Pennington, director of the Snohomish County Emergency Management Department, told reporters.

Thirty-five more people were listed as "status unknown," a catchall designation for people — such as relatives, acquaintances or other visitors — who may or may not have been in the area at the time of the landslide but haven't checked in as safe.

Authorities confirmed Tuesday that 16 bodies had been recovered from the muck and that eight other people were believed to have been found. No further bodies were found Wednesday, Pennington said.

Crews were still holding out hope that some survivors might be hidden in air pockets under the mud, called "voids," Steve Westlake, an operations section chief for the search effort, told NBC News.

"We have found those voids," Westlake said, but searchers haven't uncovered any survivors yet.

Arlington Mayor Beth Tolbert said donations had poured in from as far away as New Zealand, but she said "this is a lot of people to be missing" and pleaded for more donations to help the area rebuild.

As scores of emergency officials and volunteers scoured the soft, unstable ground, rescue dogs were starting to get "very fatigued very early," Pennington said, and coordinators were working on a plan to keep them rested and effective.

So many volunteers showed up to help at the staging site in the town of Darrington that "we don't need any more workers" there, he said. "We can't safely manage them."

Authorities said debris removal from Highway 530 remained a priority, but they said it would be a long and difficult challenge because of the presence of possible victims.

NBC NEWS

First published March 26th 2014, 6:38 pm

Missing or Unaccounted After Mudslide Down to 90

Seattle: Since the 1950s, geological reports on the hill that buckled during the weekend in Washington state's Snohomish County have included pessimistic analyses and the occasional dire prediction. But no language seems more prescient than what appears in a 1999 report filed with the US Army Corps of Engineers, warning of "the potential for a large catastrophic failure".

Why did the county issue building permits if they had this information? What weren't they thinking?

Originally Posted by Newmexican

Why did the county issue building permits if they had this information? What weren't they thinking?

Some people want less government and more freedom to do as they please.


No Easy Way to Restrict Construction in Risky Areas

By JOHN SCHWARTZMARCH 28, 2014



Searchers on Friday at the site of the deadly landslide in Oso, Wash. Homes dotted a slope despite the area’s history of such slides. CreditPool photo by Lindsey Wasson

After disasters like the Oso landslide in Washington State, a common question is why people are allowed to live in such dangerous places. On the website of Scientific American, for example, the blogger Dana Hunter wrote, “It infuriates me when officials know an area is unsafe, and allow people to build there anyway.”

But things are rarely simple when government power meets property rights. The government has broad authority to regulate safety in decisions about where and how to build, but it can count on trouble when it tries to restrict the right to build. “Often, it ends up in court,” said Lynn Highland, a geographer with the United States Geological Survey’s landslide program in Golden, Colo.
Her agency provides scientific information about geologic features and risks, but it has no regulatory authority, and state and local regulations are a patchwork, she said. When disaster strikes, people find that their insurance policies do not cover landslides without special riders that can be ruinously expensive.
Photo

Searchers in Oso. Governments have broad powers to regulate safety in construction, but decisions to restrict building often end up in court.CreditPool photo by Lindsey Wasson

“We tell people ‘buyer beware’ ” when buying or building a home, Ms. Highland said, because risk disclosure requirements vary so greatly from state to state and even from county to county.

The government constantly struggles with the issue. After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey backed programs to help the state’s coastal residents stay in their homes, while next door in New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo favored programs that would provide incentives for those along the shore to move. Congressional efforts to reduce incentives to rebuild in areas that flood repeatedly have been significantly weakened with a bill passed this month that delays cost increases for flood insurance.

After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, planners came up with sweeping proposals to rebuild a safer, stronger New Orleans, consolidating its smaller population into neighborhoods on higher ground, and transforming low-lying areas into parkland and drainage.

“I took a lot of fire on that,” said Joseph Canizaro, who headed the Bring New Orleans Back Commission. “We were trying to save lives,” he added, but people did not want to be told where to live and what to do with their homes. Edward Blakely, who led the New Orleans recovery effort, said that when he discussed some of the proposals, “people either laughed at me or were very upset.”

New Orleans is not unique, said Dr. Blakely, a professor at the United States Studies Center at the University of Sydney in Australia. “We have really overbuilt on really dangerous ground all over the country.”

Communities have occasionally been moved out of hazardous areas after disasters. The tiny town of Valmeyer, Ill., was destroyed in the 1993 Mississippi River flood, and residents recreated the town on a nearby bluff about 400 feet higher than the sodden predecessor, using $35 million in federal money. In Washington State, King County began buying homes in an unincorporated neighborhood in the 1990s that was subject to repeated, dangerous floods. Over 20 years, the county bought 60 homes.

Restricting the right to build is hard, said J. David Rogers, a professor of geological engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla. “That’s Big Brother,” he said.
Photo

Shirts for sale in nearby Arlington, Wash.CreditElaine Thompson/Associated Press

Builders and developers rarely want to hear bad news, said Dr. Rogers, who has served as a consultant evaluating stability risks. Soil and slopes can often be shored up, he said, but “when you tell them what it’s really going to cost to stabilize, they go ballistic on you.” He said, “I was the most fired consultant in the Western United States.”

While local governments focus on regulating growth, they tend to come up short on questions of local hazards, said Frank Popper, an expert in planning at Rutgers University.

The town of West, Tex., did not tell the fertilizer plant in its midst to move, he noted, and disaster struck when the facility exploded last year.

He said that little had been done to prepare the East Coast for storms like Hurricane Sandy, and that coastal residents rationalize away problems like hurricanes and rising sea levels, telling themselves “I’ll sell the place before that” or “The scientists don’t know what they’re talking about” or “My neighbor will get hit, but not me.”

Those who are skeptical of government regulation argue that it can be difficult to pin down a danger zone in most places, making attempts at restricting development overly broad. James S. Burling, the director of litigation at the Pacific Legal Foundation, a group that promotes property rights, said, “You could say everywhere on the Eastern Seaboard is in striking distance of a hurricane.”

Government powers to regulate safety in building are broad, said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University, and when government acts and property owners challenge a rule, “usually it’s very hard for landowners to win.” Professor Somin, whose scholarship has a libertarian bent, said he would like to see the ability to challenge government liberalized so that people whose property loses value because of government action have a better chance to be compensated.

As for the power to prohibit building, he suggested a less restrictive approach. “You don’t need to prevent people from developing in higher-risk areas,” he said. “You just have to make sure they bear the risk themselves.”

Another prominent libertarian legal thinker, Richard A. Epstein of the University of Chicago Law School, said that the case of Oso should be simple, however, because of its history of landslides. “The case is a no-brainer in favor of extensive government regulation in order to protect against imminent perils to life and health,” he said. “I’m a property guy, but I’m not a madman.”

The attraction of risky places can be strong; they can be as beautiful as they are deadly. Nicholas Pinter, a professor of geology at Southern Illinois University, said that he took his students to see the site of the former town of Valmeyer. As they drove along the rich flood plain, he recalled, “all my students could think of was that this would be a really good place to live.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/29/us...reas.html?_r=0