Phuket Gazette World News: Death toll from Washington state mudslide climbs to 14, scores missing

– World news selected by Gazette editors for Phuket’s international community

PHUKET: The confirmed death toll from a devastating weekend mudslide in Washington state climbed to 14 people on Monday as six more bodies were found, while scores of others remained listed as missing two days after the tragedy, authorities said.

The Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office reported the higher casualty count via Twitter hours after emergency management officials expressed doubt anyone else would be plucked alive from the muck that engulfed dozens of homes when a rain-soaked hillside near Oso, Washington, collapsed on Saturday morning.

Meanwhile, concern lingered about flooding from water backing up behind a crude dam of mud and rubble dumped into the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River by the slide in an area along State Route 530, about 55 miles (90 km) northeast of Seattle.

“The situation is very grim,” said Travis Hots, Snohomish County District 21 Fire Chief. “We’re still holding out hope that we’re going to be able to find people that may still be alive. But keep in mind we haven’t found anybody alive on this pile since Saturday in the initial stages of our operation.”

Several dozen homes were believed to have sustained some damage from the slide, John Pennington, director of the Snohomish County Department of Emergency Management, told reporters at a command post in the nearby town of Arlington.

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.

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.

On Sunday night, officials put the number of missing at 18 or more, but on Monday morning Pennington said various agencies had collected reports – some specific and others vague – of 108 people who remained listed as missing.

“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.

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, 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.”

Hope for the missing

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 (5 meters) 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.”

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.

— Phuket Gazette Editors