Mud slide

L

localboy

New member
Wondering how Dave (Sea Shift) is doing? I know he lives east of Arlington. Hopefully, Dave and ohana are high enough to avoid any potential flooding issues.
 
I drove up to that area. daves place is miles from the slide and on a high ridge/plateau between the north and south forks. He is in no danger other then he is most likely working the rescue area.

This is a major event. The hill that slide covered the river, about a 1/4 mile of property/land that had about 20 plus houses on it. I have shown one or two of these homes a few years ago. It also covered the high way for about a half miles. The slide is covering the bottom of the valley floor completely. Now the water is backing up and flooding more homes and fields up stream. The river is barely flowing down stream of the slide. There is a LOT of water building behind the dam/slide, which is about 40 to 60 ft deep. The river is going to have to get at least that deep before it can top the slide area and start to dig a channel. If it does that slowly, which I doubt, then maybe it will drain the lake that is forming. I predict that once the river starts to dig that channel it will increase in speed and start the slide moving and cause a flash flood.

This is no were near being over. There are a few good helo fly over of the area on you tube. compare the one from the 22 to today and see how much water is building behind the slide. No one is driving to darlington any time this year unless the move the road.
 
This is a horrific tragedy. The number of missing is very high, maybe two dozen, with 8 confirmed dead. The slide came down over a housing development with many homes which are now totally covered in mud. It also covered cars traveling on the roadway next to the river. I can't think of a natural disaster in Washington State that has touched so many.

http://waterdata.usgs.gov/wa/nwis/uv?site_no=12167000

This is the river flow graph of the North Fork Stillaguamish River down stream from the slide, near the town of Arlington. Find Saturdays date mid day and you can see how the flow dramatically dropped after the landslide. The good news is the river is now near normal flows as it has formed a "new" channel in an old flow area. The flood warning is in place above the slide, and the flash flood warning is also still in place for below the slide. The area is still very active.

Thoughts and prayers to all families touched by this event, and a huge thank you to all of the emergency workers who are doing their best in an almost impossible situation.

I would guess Dave is indeed working in some capacity in Oso. This is going to be tough, as I'm sure he personally knows many of the people involved. Our thoughts and prayers are with you Dave.

Robbi
 
They just raised the number of missing to 108. That is quite a jump. With 30 homes gone I thought that only 18 missing was low or lucky.



I can't think of a natural disaster in Washington State that has touched so many.
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Mt Saint Helens??
 
Tom- thanks for the excellent writeup of your first hand account of the mudslide. You can bet that Dave is doing everything he possibly can to help those affected. I read in another report that some rescuers were up to their armpits in mud and had to be extricated themselves. Again, as Robbi said,
"Thoughts and prayers to all families touched by this event, and a huge thank you to all of the emergency workers who are doing their best in an almost impossible situation."
 
Drove that stretch of highway many times when I lived in Seattle. A surprise that the release came from the north side, as other sections of 530 have more exposure to slopes to the south of 530. This thing is massive, way beyond what I thought, slopping across the Stillaguamish and then up the other side of the river. (Edit)

A true tragedy, and likely not a site that stood out with the potential for a slide this deadly. I am humbled.
 
AstoriaDave":3vyi9ttz said:
Drove that stretch of highway many times when I lived in Seattle. A surprise that the release came from the north side, as other sections of 530 have more exposure to slopes to the south of 530. This thing is massive, way beyond what I thought, slopping across the Stillaguamish and then up the other side of the river. (Edit)

A true tragedy, and likely not a site that stood out with the potential for a slide this deadly. I am humbled.
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Yes huge and humbling. However, there have been landslides in that area before - 2 large ones within the past 30 years or so. So for geologists, I this is not a wildly unusual event. Maybe not predictable but not entirely unexpected either. If you look on many of the hills in that area with a geologists eye, you'll see plenty of evidence of previous slides. This web site shows a listing of most of the known landslides within WA state. While the data is incomplete (and hence may miss some landslides), it gives you a sense of which areas are landslide prone. This is a good map to use when considering a real estate purchase. Note - you need to "turn on" the landslide display and wait patiently for the map to update.
 
Good Morning my fellow C-Brats and thank you for your prayers and concerns. When Mark texted me this morning I realized that all of you wonderful folks were thinking of those affected by this horrific event.
I was on the initial "call out" of this incident at 1057 HRS Saturday morning. From that call out time to my return at our station I logged in 34 1/2 continuous hours of time, came home and took a 4 1/2 hour nap and returned to duty returning to our station at 2400 HRS last night (it is now 0200 HRS). Please know that I am just one of many putting in these hours.
The devastation is enormous and involves more homes than previously reported. Additionally the missing count estimate has increased significantly.
Yes, it has personally touched me as I know and work with one individual affected.
Today, I logged many hours on one of our team's Hovercrafts. FEMA has now taken a leadership role in this incident.
As some of you may remember last spring our Swift Water Rescue Team responded to the I-5 bridge collapse in Mt. Vernon....so 2 major incidents in less than one year is extremely unusual...(at least around here).
For those of you "old timers" who recall The Night the Mountain Fell, (also the name of a book). This book tells of the night a major portion of a mountain slid in Montana near Yellowstone National Park in the 50's burying numerous campers in the valley below and created Quake Lake just below Hebgen Lake and Hebgen Dam. This event Saturday is to me very similar to that event in the 50's ( which incidentally I was camped 50 miles from that location the night it occurred).
Obviously, I am not at liberty to divulge much information on this weekend's event as it would be inappropriate, however, I can share one happy event that occurred to me yesterday.....

While on the Hovercraft searching the area that has backed up behind the slide area we found a dog swimming near us. After some coaxing, we managed to get near enough to reach down to pull the tired dog into our craft. In the process, the dog chomped down on my hand through the diving gloves I was wearing. Naturally, it ended up on emergency radio traffic that a dog had been rescued and a responder had been bitten.

I know that what I have written is sketchy, but do please keep those folks who have lost loved ones and all their possessions in your thoughts and prayers.

Love you all...nite nite.
 
Glad you're safe Dave. Keep up the good work, we all knew you were in the middle of it. Are you gonna adopt the dog?

Keep us posted, but don't give up sleep for it!

Prayers to all involved.

Charlie
 
Glad to hear you're safe and doing well Dave. Sure you have a few years on many of the guys in S&R and that may slow you down a tad but I'm sure many appreciate the years of experience you bring to the site. Keep up the good work and stay safe out there.
 
Here's an interesting story from the Seattle Times that talks about the previous history of that site and the known risks. I think the title is perhaps a tad unfair as makes the head of Snohomish County’s Department of Emergency Management look pretty bad. I'm guessing that his statement about the slide being unforeseen was made in haste while managing a disaster and that he'd probably use different language if asked under different circumstances. Hindsight is 20/20.

Nonetheless, it does point to the fact that the risks were pretty well known. However, no one can predict the exact timing of such an event. Given that we humans like to live near water and in beautiful places, it's not really a huge surprise that such an area was built upon.
 
rogerbum":32qkqycd said:
Here's an interesting story from the Seattle Times that talks about the previous history of that site and the known risks. I think the title is perhaps a tad unfair as makes the head of Snohomish County’s Department of Emergency Management look pretty bad. [Snip]
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Thanks for putting that up, Roger. The history paints a pretty clear picture of a high risk area, particularly because of the action of the river in eating away old slide toes. Worth looking af the LIDAR image of the overall area, which shows a landscape littered with old scarps and extensive slide toes, the Oso slide initiation zone being one of the highest and having a very steep downhill run directed right at the area of inundated homes. Hindsight is perfect, I guess.

I expect this will be in geology text books for years.
 
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