Death toll in Washington mudslide rises to 24 with dozens still missing: Hope fades as rescuers recover two more bodies and believe they have located eight others 'underground'
The death toll in the massive landslide that hit in Washington
state on Saturday is set to rise to 24 - with dozens more still missing.
Washington state officials say searchers found 10 more bodies in the
debris of a massive landslide, raising the number of people who died in
the disaster to 24. This aerial photograph taken in the aftermath of the
huge landslide that struck the town of Oso shows how the hillside
collapsed - while the red-dots in the diagram (inset right) represent
the 49 homes that have been leveled by the disaster
Geologists warned about Washington landslide 15 years ago: Before and after shots clearly show the lethal geography that has worried experts since 1999 as DOZENS are feared dead
New before and after images of the colossal landslide in Oso, Washington, reveal the shocking scale of devastation which wiped out 100 homes, killing 14 and leaving 176 people unaccounted for.
More than one mile of rain-soaked hillside collapsed onto the remote town, which is just five square miles in size, at 11am on Saturday.
Three days on, hundreds of rescue workers with dogs, aircraft
and sonar equipment remain scouring the wreckage for survivors in the slide which has swamped a fifth of Oso's land.
But amidst the devastation, experts have revealed they predicted this would happen in 1999.
Set side by side, the two images show how the
one-mile stretch of land looked before the disaster this weekend which
saw more than 176 go missing and killed 14
Sheer scale: The shocking difference caused by the massive mudslide is shown in these before and after aerial photos
The impacted area: A massive mudslide occurred
in rural Snohomish County about 55 miles north of Seattle, Washington
state, on Saturday morning
Hit like a bulldozer: Houses and other
structures are shown flooded by the backed-up Stillaguamish River
up-river from the massive mudslide that killed at least 24 people on
Saturday and left dozens missing
The main road, State Route 530, is now
completely cut off as it is submerged in water. Rescue teams have parked
as close to the edge as possible to look for survivors
The collapse swamped a fifth of the town, crushing more than 100 homes and leaving dozens of school pupils unaccounted for
In a report filed with the US Army Corps of Engineers, geologists warned of 'the potential for a large catastrophic failure' 15 years ago.
'We've known it would happen at some point, we just didn't know when,' co-author Daniel Miller told The Seattle Times.
Geological reports warning the hill is in imminent danger of collapse date back to the 1950s.
But the alerts, issued by experts every ten years, went unnoticed.
And in a press
conference following Saturday's slide, the head of Snohomish County's
Department of Emergency Management, John Pennington, said 'it was
considered very safe'.
Mr Miller said he was shocked to see houses being built around the danger zone weeks after a slide in 2006.
The
slide, which was thought to be caused by heavy rain, formed a new
channel along the cliff-side, but carpenters immediately set to work
erecting homes along it.
'Frankly I was shocked that the county permitted any building from across the river,' Mr Miller told the paper.
Today,
half a week after the latest slide, rescue workers are using chain saws
and their bare hands to dig through the mangled wreckage, as an
increasing number of residents report missing loved-ones.
And further rain over the next few days is expected to hamper recovery efforts.
On Monday morning the death toll stood at eight, but last night a further six bodies were found.
The
tragic discovery was announced via Twitter hours after emergency
management officials expressed doubt anyone else would be plucked alive
from the muck that engulfed dozens of homes.
Snohomish County Emergency Management
Director John Pennington said the number of people unaccounted for had
ballooned from 18 to 176 - and The County Fire District 21 Chief Travis
Hots told reporters that 'the situation is very grim' - but emphasized that many of those names could be duplicates.
Scarred: An aerial view shows a huge volume of earth missing from the side of a hill facing Stillaguamish River
Trees lie flat across the ground between Darrington and Arlington, Washington, after the disaster
The river's banks have collapsed and water is
flooding after mud piled in from a hillside on Saturday, and remains the
same today
This aerial shot was taken by Governor Jay Inslee as he helicoptered around the site while rescue workers search for survivors
What was once a uniformed line of river and street along the hillside is now a mess of mud and water
More than 100 homes were affected by the
collapse of the hill and the overflowing river which now separates the
town and covers one mile
'We're holding out hope, but keep in mind we've not found anybody alive on this pile since Saturday,' he said.
'The
176, I believe very strongly is not a number we're going to see in
fatalities. I believe it's going to drop dramatically,' he said.
The list of the 176 missing is in some instances is very vague, said Pennington.
'In
some cases, that list is very detailed. It's 'John, who has brown hair,
blue eyes and lived in this particular neighborhood.' Pennington said.
'In a lot of cases, it's a name like Frank, 'I met him once. I think he lived over there.'
However,
while they do not expect the death toll to match the number of missing,
they are concerned that many people were home when the slide struck at
11am on Saturday with such power it was described as being like a 'bulldozer'.
Several
dozen homes were believed to have sustained some damage from the slide,
Pennington told reporters at a command post in the nearby
town of Arlington.
Search: From a helicopter, Snohomish County
Sheriff Ty Trenary surveys the wreckage of homes destroyed in Saturday's
mudslide near Oso, Washington as the search for survivors grew on
Monday to include scores of people who were still unaccounted for
Grim: The death toll so far stood at eight on
Monday morning, but the tragic discovery of six bodies on Monday evening
was announced via Twitter hours after emergency management officials
expressed doubt anyone else would be plucked alive
Devastation: Search and rescue personnel continue working the area of Saturday's mudslide, at Oso, Washington
Apocalyptic: Steve Skaglund walks across the rubble on the east side of Saturday's fatal mudslide
Tribute: A bouquet of flowers left for victims
sits perched on the seat of an abandoned vehicle in the wreckage of
homes destroyed by Saturday's mudslide, Monday, March 24, 2014, near
Oso, Washington
Here rescue workers are seen removing a body from the wreckage of homes destroyed by a mudslide near Oso
This is one of the six bodies found after emergency services expressed doubt over their ability to find the missing people
The
National Guard is expected to arrive on Tuesday morning to aid the
search of the leveled homes and cars across the 1-mile square area hit.
Tragic stories from relatives of those missing are already emerging.
Jonielle
Spillers, a nursing assistant fears that she may have lost three of her
four children and her husband - while her youngest boy managed to
barely escape the slide.
Her
son Jovon Mangual, his half-sisters Kaylee Spillers, 5, Brooke
Spillers, 2 and Jonielle's husband Billy Spillers are all missing.
According
to Jovon's father, Jose Mangual, a staff sergeant in the US Army, the
Spillers moved from Seattle to Oso two years ago.
He
said that he had spoken to Jovon's 4-year-old half-brother Jacob
Spillers who described the terrifying scene when the landslide struck.
According
to Jacob, Billy Spillers - a chief petty officer in the Navy - was
watching television with the three missing children when the land gave
way.
Jacob said that he was on the second floor of the house and manged somehow to get away.
On
her Facebook profile, Jonielle thanked everyone for their support and
said she was 'not giving up and I know they will find my babies and
husband....please pray for us.'
Huge numbers: Authorities say they still don't
know how many people remain missing from a deadly Washington state
mudslide. Snohomish County Emergency Management Director John Pennington
said late Monday that officials were working off a potential list of
176 people, but he stressed that authorities believed that included many
duplicate names
Unrecognizable: Mudflows forver changed the landscape of this area one hour north of Seattle
Staggering: At least 14 people have died.
Officials say they are still culling through multiple reports of people
who may have lived or worked in the area. The slide smashed through a
small community about 55 miles north of Seattle on Saturday morning
Other family members of the
missing such as Pete Bellomo, of Bellevue spent the day trying to find
out any information on his daughter Shelley and her partner Jerry Logan.
He did not hold out hope they would be found alive.
'No,
no, I don’t think there’s any chance of that ... but I haven’t been
informed of anything yet,' he said to the Seattle Times.
Thomas Durnell, 65, was at home when the landslide piled into his house and is missing according to his daughter Pam Keller.
Caroline
Neal hopes her missing father, Steven, 52, will still be rescued. He's a
plumber who was on a service call when the land gave way.
POSSIBLE CAUSES OF THE ENORMOUS LANDSLIDE:
Snohomish County Department of Emergency Management officials say the area has a history of unstable land. A slide also happened there in 2006. Authorities believe the latest slide was caused by recent heavy rainfall that saturated and destabilized the ground. David Montgomery, an earth and space sciences professor at the University of Washington, said these deep-seated slides tend to occur from rainfall over months or seasons. 'This was a big deep one, a giant slump,' he said.
'My dad is a quick thinker, and he is someone who takes action in an emergency,' Neal told CNN affiliate KING. 'If he had any warning at all, we just have to think he is somewhere and he's safe and they just can't reach him right now.
One retired lumber mill worker, Reed Miller, told Seattle television station KOMO-TV that his riverfront house was demolished by the slide, and that his 47-year-old son, Joseph. with whom he shared the home, was probably swept away with it.
'Well, he was at home. As far as I know he's gone,' said Miller, who was at a grocery store in town at the time. 'There's no official (word) that he's been found yet, but he could be buried. I just don't know.'
Cory Kuntz and several volunteers worked Monday with chain saws to cut through the roof of his uncle's house, which was swept about 150 yards from its previous location. Kuntz said his aunt, Linda McPherson, was killed. He and the others pulled out files, his aunt's wallet and a box filled with pictures and slides.
McPherson was branch manager of the Darrington library and served for about 15 years on the local school board.
Her husband Gary McPherson was injured in the landslide too but survived.
'When you look at it, you just kind of go in shock, and you kind of go numb,' he said, adding that there were more people out helping Sunday. On Monday, they couldn't get through roadblocks.
'They are all eager to get down here, but unfortunately they can't. It just shows how tight this community is,' he said.
Doug Reuwsaat, who grew up in the area and was also helping in the search, said authorities had told people to stay away.
'We're related to a lot of these people from around here. So that's why we're here,' he said.
Among those who are missing are the wife and granddaughter of Oso firefighter Seth Jeffereds.
He and his stepdaughter were out collecting errands when the landslide began according to him.
Christina Jeffereds, 45, was at home babysitting 4-month old Sanoah Huestis when the earth began to move.
Also,
Barbara Welsh, who spoke to reporters at a news briefing on Monday said
that she hadn't seen her husband, William Welsh since Saturday.
Gone: The entire side of this small mountain was washed away
Frustrations
were growing as family members and neighbors waited for official word
on the missing and the dead. Elaine Young and her neighbors uncovered
several bodies Sunday and had to contact authorities to get them
removed.
VOICES CALLING OUT: FRANTIC SEARCH FOR SURVIVORS
VOICES CALLING OUT: FRANTIC SEARCH FOR SURVIVORS
Late
on Saturday, rescuers heard people yelling for help but were unable to
reach anyone. The soupy, quicksand-like mud was so thick and deep that
searchers had to turn back. When crews were able to get back onto the
debris field Sunday, they found only more bodies. 'We didn't see or hear any signs of life,' Snohomish County Fire District 21 Chief Travis Hots said Sunday evening.
They also found a chocolate Labrador named Buddy alive, and helped pull the dog from the rubble, leading her to wonder if other survivors could be out there, desperate for help.
'If we found a dog alive yesterday afternoon that we cut out of a part of a house, doesn't that seem that maybe somebody could be stuck up under part of a house and be alive too?' asked Young, whose home survived the slide but was on the edge of the devastation.
Nichole Webb Rivera told the Seattle Times she frantically called and texted her parents, her daughter and her daughter’s fiance when the massive hillside collapsed.
Rivera said her parents, Thom and Marcy Satterlee, lived near the center of the slide, and she doesn’t believe they made it out.
She said her 20-year-old daughter, Delaney Webb, and Webb’s fiance were visiting the older couple at the time.
Rivera lives in Houston but has traveled to Washington following the slide. She said Monday after visiting the area: 'We’ve lost four.'
Ron Thompson, whose home was destroyed, stopped by the evacuation shelter at Post Middle School in Arlington to find out if his friends turned up alive. 'We lost a lot of good kids. I don’t know what else to tell you. It hurts,’ he said before driving away.
Also among the missing was a group of girls who had been having a slumber party, according to a resident interviewed by The Seattle Times.
Retired firefighter Gail Moffett, who lives in Oso, said she knows about 25 people who are missing, including entire families with young children.
'It's safe to say I'll know everyone affected or who they are,' Moffett said. 'There's so much pain going on in the community right now.'
Among the injured were a mother and her baby. Amanda Skorjanc, 25, was in satisfactory condition at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, spokeswoman Susan Gregg said.
Her son, 22-week-old Duke Suddarth, remained in critical condition and was improving, Gregg said. Three other men were in serious condition.
More than 100 properties in all were hit by the cascading mud, 49 of which had a house, cabin or mobile home on them. At least 25 of those homes were believed to have been occupied year round, and 10 others were part-time or vacation homes, Pennington said.
The search for victims resumed under partly cloudy skies on Monday after treacherous quicksand-like conditions forced rescue workers to suspend their efforts at dusk on Sunday. Some workers, mired in mud up to their armpits, had to be dragged to safety.
Members of a search team were forced to retreat again from the western edge of the slide area after movement was detected along a 1,500-foot (460-meter) stretch of earth, said Rebecca Hover, a spokeswoman for the county executive's office.
The first eight bodies were found by Sunday evening in the square-mile (2.6 square km) disaster zone of tangled debris, rocks, trees and mud, a sheriff's spokesman said. The late afternoon Twitter bulletin on Monday said the remains of six more victims had also been found.
Debris: Water and mud back up on the east side of Saturday's fatal mudslide near Oso, in Washington
Search operation: A rescue helicopter flies above the area on Sunday surveying the damage and looking for survivors or bodies
Here to help: This search helicopter looks for bodies - alive or dead - among the ruins of the catastrophic mudflow
All that's left: A Little League picture frame caked with mud sits outside after flooding caused the mudslides
Officer Aaron Snell, a spokesman for
the police department in nearby Everett, said all 14 bodies had been
recovered. Another eight people were injured in the landslide.
Authorities
on Monday also reported a sharp jump in the number of people listed as
unaccounted for in the chaos after the disaster, heightening fears the
casualty toll could climb even higher.
'The number is, I
think no question, going to decline dramatically. But it is a number
that we want to just go ahead and disclose and say, 'That's what we're
working with,'' Pennington said.
The potential number of victims in
harm's way was higher on a Saturday, with many people at home, than on a
weekday when more residents would have been at work or school,
Pennington said. He said search teams were also trying to account for an
unspecified number of construction workers who were in the area and
motorists who were driving by at the time.
But authorities were hoping many of those reported as missing would turn out to be survivors who were either double-counted or slow in alerting loved ones and local officials as to their whereabouts.
The slide in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains along the Stillaguamish River piled mud, boulders and rubble up to 15 feet deep in some places.
It blocked the flow of the river, backing up water behind a natural dam left in the stream's channel that caused flooding of seven homes upstream of the slide, Pennington said.
'The bad news is that the water continues to rise and homes are inundated up to the eaves in many cases,' he said. 'If there is a silver lining in that event ... it is that it is a slow, methodical rise. You can see the danger.'
Destruction: A demolished house sits in the mud
on Highway 530 on Sunday, a day after a giant landslide occurred near
Oso, in Washington
Brian Anderson, left, and Coby Young search
through the wreckage of a home belonging to the Kuntz family - who
escaped certain doom while attending a Saturday morning baseball game
Authorities said as the volume and
pressure of water behind the dam continued to build, there was a chance
that additional downstream flooding and mud flows could be unleashed.
Water
from the river was trickling through the side of the debris plug and
creating a new stream channel, prompting authorities to post observation
teams downstream to watch for signs of danger, state emergency
management officials said.
Hots
said Monday's search for victims would incorporate the use of aircraft,
teams with search dogs and special electronic equipment.
'Also,
the Washington State Department of Transportation is going to have
heavy equipment out there to clear mud out of the way so that we can
continue to search those areas,' he said.
Authorities believe Saturday's slide was caused by recent heavy rains that made the terrain unstable.
From
the beginning, rescue crews on the ground have faced dangerous and
unpredictable conditions as they navigated quicksand-like mud that was
15 feet deep in some places. Some who went in got caught up to their
armpits in the thick, sticky sludge.
From another angle: An aerial view of the
Stillaguamish River and the extensive damage from the landslide, along
State Route 530 between the cities of Arlington and Darrington
The threat of potential flash floods
or another landslide also loomed over rescuers. On Monday, some crews
had to pull back because of concern that a hillside could shift.
The
spirits of search-and-rescue teams were raised late Saturday when they
heard cries for help from the flotsam of trees, dirt and shattered wood.
But no one else has been found alive.
The
slide blocked the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River, which is
continuing to back up, officials said. Authorities said Monday at least
seven homes are now flooded, and more flooding is expected.
Frequent,
heavy rain and steep geography make the area prone to landslides. Less
than a decade ago, another slide hit in the same general area.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee described
the scene as 'a square mile of total devastation' after flyingover the
disaster area Sunday. He assured families that everything was being done
to find their missing loved ones.
Update: Snohomish County Fire District 21 Chief
Travis Hots speaks to the media in Arlington, Washington on Sunday,
following the massive mudslide which wiped out homes and killed at least
eight
On
Monday, President Barack Obama declared an emergency, ordering federal
aid for the struggling community and federal agencies to coordinate
relief efforts.
Barbara
Welsh went to Monday's news briefing in Arlington to get more
information. She said she has not seen her husband, William Welsh, since
Saturday, when he went to help someone in Oso with a water tank.
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.
Smashed: A mudslide carried a house with people inside across a road in rural Snohomish County on Saturday
Splintered: One of the homes brought down by the fatal mudslide
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