Mudslide rescuers recover 10 more bodies
Print Edition
RESCUERS using small bulldozers and their bare hands pushed through sludge strewn with splintered homes and twisted cars to find 10 more bodies in the debris of a Washington state mudslide, authorities said.
Despite the grim discoveries as the search entered its fifth day yesterday — and the likelihood that more bodies will be found — officials were still hoping to find survivors.
“We haven’t lost hope that there’s a possibility that we can find somebody alive in some pocket area,” said Travis Hots, a county fire chief.
Two bodies were recovered on Tuesday, while eight were located in the debris field from Saturday’s slide 88 kilometers northeast of Seattle, Hots said.
That brings the likely death toll to 24, though authorities are keeping the official toll at 16 until the eight other bodies are recovered. With scores still missing, authorities are working off a list of 176 people unaccounted for, though some names could be duplicates.
Hundreds of rescuers and heavy equipment operators slogged through the muck and rain, following the search dogs over the unstable surface.
“Going on the last three days the most effective tool has been dogs and just our bare hands and shovels uncovering people,” Hots said.
As the increasingly desperate search progressed, reports surfaced that warned of the potential for dangerous landslides in the community.
A 2010 report commissioned by Snohomish County to comply with a federal law warned that neighborhoods along the Stillaguamish River were among the highest-risk areas, The Seattle Times reported.
The hillside that collapsed on Saturday outside of the community of Oso was one highlighted as particularly dangerous, said the report by California-based engineering and architecture firm Tetra Tech.
“For someone to say that this plan did not warn that this was a risk is a falsity,” said report author and Tetra Tech program manager Rob Flaner.
A 1999 report by geomorphologist Daniel Miller, although not about housing, raises questions about why residents were allowed to build homes in the area and whether officials had taken proper precautions.
“I knew it’d fail catastrophically in a large-magnitude event,” though not when it would happen, said Miller, who was hired by the US Army Corps of Engineers to do the study.
A year later, the US Army Corps of engineers warned in another study that lives would be at risk if the hillside collapsed, The Daily Herald of Everett reported.
Residents and county officials were focused on flood prevention, even after a 2006 landslide that did not reach any homes.
- About Us
- |
- Terms of Use
- |
-
RSS - |
- Privacy Policy
- |
- Contact Us
- |
- Shanghai Call Center: 962288
- |
- Tip-off hotline: 52920043
- 沪ICP证：沪ICP备05050403号-1
- |
- 互联网新闻信息服务许可证：31120180004
- |
- 网络视听许可证：0909346
- |
- 广播电视节目制作许可证：沪字第354号
- |
- 增值电信业务经营许可证：沪B2-20120012
Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.
