Fourteen dead, roughly 100 missing after WA State mudslide

SNOHOMISH COUNTY (NEWS1130) – Emergency personnel in Washington State say there roughly 100 people who are missing or unaccounted for after Saturday’s mudslide north of Seattle.

Snohomish County emergency management director John Pennington emphasizes that doesn’t mean there are 100 injuries or fatalities. But he says it’s the consolidated list of reported missing from various sources that authorities are working from.

The death toll has risen to 14 after the discovery of six more bodies following a mudslide that tore through homes in a community near Oso, northeast of Seattle, late Saturday morning.

The slide destroyed dozens of houses. Some of the homes in the community are reported to have been nearly a century old.

“Some of the bodies have been removed and some of them have been marked, and we’re gonna go back there,” says Snohomish County Fire District Chief, Travis Hots.

Parts of the slide are said to have been about 60 feet deep.

SFU prof says area is like Chilliwack Valley

In our province, Simon Fraser University earth sciences professor John Clague says the area where the slide occurred reminds him of the Chilliwack Valley.

“There are very similar materials to those that bailed down in Washington, and where of course you get heavy rainfall, those are the two factors that drive these big slope failures.”

But Clague doesn’t expect anything as catastrophic as what happened south of border. “We would not expect a landslide on this scale. This is so unusual to get such a monster like this.”

He says it’s more likely we would see a smaller failure here.