OSO, Wash.—Officials expect the number of people killed in the
massive mudslide to rise "substantially" as questions persisted over
whether warnings about the site's potential for disaster had been
sufficiently publicized or heeded.
The list of 16 confirmed dead
was expected to rise by at least nine after the bodies found at the
scene were flown to the county's medical examiner, emergency officials
said Wednesday night. The list of missing—while revised downward from
176—still stands at 90, with another 35 people whose status isn't yet
certain.
Before and After the Mudslide
Travis Hots, chief of Snohomish County Fire District 21, said
Thursday morning that officials expect the number of fatalities to rise
"substantially" as the medical examiner's office works to catch up with
the recovery effort.
One of the bodies most recently found at the
scene was of a motorist inside an automobile, whose vehicle was swept
200 feet off State Highway 530, county officials said. Recovery crews
used cutting equipment to remove the roof of the debris-covered vehicle
and recover the body, Mr. Hots said. He didn't say if the victim was a
man or woman.
Mr. Hots said work crews at the site paid homage to
the deceased by becoming silent. "When a person gets removed, it gets
quiet out there," he said. "You can hear a pin drop."
A searcher stands Wednesday on a huge pile of
rubble, including the remains of homes and other structures, at the
scene of the deadly mudslide near Oso, Wash.
Associated Press
More than 200 people using dogs, helicopters and sonar worked
in the debris field Wednesday. In a tour of the site, wreckage of the
community could be seen covered in a treacherous gray muck as deep as 20
feet in spots, as backhoes scooped up partial loads for inspection,
according to a media pool report.
"There are finds going on continually," said
Steve Mason,
a fire battalion chief from south Snohomish County who is helping lead the operation.
Meanwhile,
geology experts who had raised warnings about the possibility of such a
catastrophic landslide years before continued to question why their
reports went largely unheeded. Snohomish officials have said repeatedly
that they believed residents had been made fully aware of the
possibility of landslides in the area, but that such a major event
couldn't be foreseen.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee said in a
television interview Wednesday that his office didn't know yet if
warnings about the site were missed. "We will get to the bottom of that
question when we have time to thoroughly evaluate it," he said.
Dramatic raw video from the Snohomish County Helicopter
Rescue Team shows workers saving a four-year-old boy from the
devastating mudslide that hit a rural Washington state community on
March 22. Photo: Snohomish HRT
Jaime Smith, a spokeswoman for Mr. Inslee, said later: "Our
office is focused 100% on search and recovery." Asked about whether the
governor might initiate an official probe, Ms. Smith said "that
conversation hasn't happened yet."
The most significant warning
about the site's hazards came from Seattle geomorphologist
Daniel Miller.
His 1999 report, written for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers as
part of a separate fish-habitat assessment, noted the "potential for a
large catastrophic failure" at what is known as the Hazel Landslide, the
area that collapsed last weekend. In an interview this week, Mr. Miller
said that report and others should have served as a warning to not
build in the area.
"We did something that should've raised a red flag," said Mr.
Miller, who said he didn't bring his reports directly to the attention
of county officials.
A smaller landslide in 2006 caused flooding
but didn't destroy any homes. Mr. Miller said efforts were made to
divert the river away from the base of the hill to prevent future
slides. But he said those measures didn't eliminate all the risk, and he
said he raised the issue with local landowners.
"The county
could have made a greater effort to map landslide hazards—they could
have chased down reports and maps," Mr. Miller said. "Mine was just one
of several."
Searchers walk near a demolished house following a
deadly mudslide that happened several days earlier in Arlington, Wash.
Associated Press
In a briefing Wednesday,
John Pennington,
the county's emergency management director, said the county after
the 2006 slide spent millions shoring up the area, including
reinforcing the channel of the Stillaguamish River to keep it in its
banks.
"We did everything we could in the community to make them
feel safe," said Mr. Pennington, at times emotional. "That community
felt safe. Sometimes big events just happen, and this event happened."
Meanwhile,
at the slide site, estimated to be a mile wide, the mostly volunteer
workers faced splintered wood, twisted metal and other dangers buried in
the soggy mess. Falling rain made the site even more treacherous.
Searcher
Garrett Simmons,
on a break at the Oso fire station, said he fell up to his waist
in a watery pit while scouring the scene this week. "Imagine 30 homes
pressed together into a pile, you step on a piece of plywood and you can
fall 5 feet into a pool of water," said Mr. Simmons, a 20-year-old
carpenter.
Volunteers were assisted by numerous fire departments
and other emergency agencies from across the West Coast. California's
Riverside Fire Department dispatched an eight-person team with two
18-wheeler trucks loaded with equipment to help coordinate
communications and logistics from a command center in Arlington, said
Robert Gabler,
a team coordinator.
A 77-person response team from a state
disaster task force was on the scene with four dogs trained in cadaver
and rescue search, as well as backhoes, shovels and other digging
equipment, said
Dan Hudson,
one of the coordinators. While time was running out, he said,
hope wasn't lost to find survivors in the wreckage.
