Mud slide in Darrington, WA

Q

quneur

Member
Joined
Jun 9, 2011
Messages
1,856
Reaction score
791
Location
Mukilteo, Washington
Last Saturday, a mile wide mud slide took out the town of Oso, WA. 14 are confirmed dead and approximately 108 people are still unaccounted for. Rescuers are having a hard time searching the area due to the amount of mud. We are expecting more rain throughout the week further hampering recovery efforts.

With all the news concentrating on the missing Malaysia airlines, this story hasn't really gotten the attention from the media.

Darrington is about 20 miles north of me. My deepest symphathies to those effected.
 
Register to hide this ad
I've been following this event. It must be very disheartening for the emergency responders to find the very ground is too unstable to walk on to even attempt a rescue.

I looked on Google maps and it appears that the area has moved or tried to in the past. Where the scarp face is now you can see signs of previous smaller slips with trees ripped out of the ground. However, I'm not sure if it would be that visible from the road and community below. Bad business.
 
Last edited:
Some rescuers had to be rescued themselves - up to their waists and higher in a mud slurry that acted like quicksand.

I've driven that road more than once - it was my preferred method of getting to the North Cascades Hwy and Diablo Lake.
 
I thought it was reported as Arlington WA. That's only a few miles North of my Son's place in Marysville WA. I visited a nice firing range and gun shop there last summer when we visited. It doesn't look good out there.
 
H Richard said:
I thought it was reported as Arlington WA. That's only a few miles North of my Son's place in Marysville WA. I visited a nice firing range and gun shop there last summer when we visited. It doesn't look good out there.
Click to expand...

Arlington is the closest town of any size. It's where highways 530 and 9 meet. It's about 12 miles going east from Arlington to the site of the mudslide.

No it isn't looking good. More rain today. Slide area is too unstable to use heavy equipment so searching and cleanup are by hand and foot. Friend of a friend's brother was in the area installing a satellite dish. No official word but... you know.
 
Update

24 now confirmed dead, 176 unaccounted for. The 176 list are said to be duplicates as people are reporting missing loved ones. A very sad story.
 
The slide occurred less than 4 miles East of Oso, WA, directly above Steelhead Drive. This is about 14 miles East of Arlington and 12 miles West of Darrington. One of my pet peeves is the habit of the media calling out a location "near" an event instead of describing the actual location.

If you use Google Earth the exact location is: 48°17'4.56"N - 121°50'52.12"W Simply paste these coordinates into the search field and Google Earth will take you directly to the site. The damaged area is directly across the river.
 
H Richard said:
I thought it was reported as Arlington WA. That's only a few miles North of my Son's place in Marysville WA. I visited a nice firing range and gun shop there last summer when we visited. It doesn't look good out there.
Click to expand...

That was probably the Norpoint range and gun shop. I shoot an IDPA match there every month. I haven't heard anything about next months match yet but wouldn't be surprised if their schedule gets modified. The range is West of Arlington so it's even closer to the slide area. I'm sure many of the members know some of the victims or are victims themselves. This is a sad affair. I grew up in this area and slides are a pretty regular occurrence but the size of this one is an abnormality.
 
Yes, it was Norpoint. I sent my son his old Anschutz match rifle he used on the HS shooting Team, as he now has a boy old enough to learn with a good rifle. I understand there is a Marysville Gun Club also.
 
I worked as a surveyor for Snohomish County for 30 years. In 2007 I was working on a dike that had been built on the river in that neighborhood. In 2006 a slide had moved the river several hundred feet south into the residential area that was completely demolished by that slide a few days ago. I talked to several people that lived there who are probably buried under 15' of mud right now. I'm sure many of those people will never be found.

This whole thing is very tragic and my heart goes out to the families who will never know exactly what happened to their loved ones. I've lived in this area since 1975 and the only disaster that even comes close was when Mt. St. Helen's erupted 34 years ago. I suspect that the death toll will be around 100 people.
 
Alk8944 said:
The slide occurred less than 4 miles East of Oso, WA, directly above Steelhead Drive. This is about 14 miles East of Arlington and 12 miles West of Darrington. One of my pet peeves is the habit of the media calling out a location "near" an event instead of describing the actual location.

If you use Google Earth the exact location is: 48°17'4.56"N - 121°50'52.12"W Simply paste these coordinates into the search field and Google Earth will take you directly to the site. The damaged area is directly across the river.
Click to expand...

Exactly.

The news media has not discovered GPS and Goggle Earth. I heard one report that said the town of Oso, WA. was destroyed. Most accounts of disasters only give the location of the nearest town and in some cases not even that. If you know people who live in the area it would be helpful for the media to give the coordinates of the disaster so people would know exactly where it was. My cell phone will give me coordinates in about a minute. All the media has to do is request coordinates from emergency management dispatchers but they don't even know enough to do that.
 
First, I do not want to appear unsympathetic but much of this tragedy could have been avoided,

We travel through this area several times a year. We go steelhead/salmon fishing in the Skagit, do an annual fall foliage trip along North Cascade Hwy, through the Nat'l Park (If the pases haven't closed early), down through Darrington to Monroe and back over Snoqualmie and Blewett Passes. We also try to go see the eagles in early Spring along the Skagit (North Cascade Pass is almost always closed until May, at least so we have to go through the Darrington area).

The very first trip through the area, I noticed that many of the hills were clear-cut==nothing left to re-route or hold back erosion and many hills had homes at the base, right along the road. The bottom of the hills were a valley, 1/2 stream and 1/2 road==typical flood plains. Any ethical planner would have pointed out that any lender is going to require flood insurance. However, many Supervisors are "good ol' boys" and don't disclose or just ignore flood hazards, especially when the applicant is a friend or relative. This is not economic necessity but simple greed. "I don't want to pay for flood insurance" or "I don't want to leave buffers". We see this with docks on the Columbia. It is estimated that 90%+ of the boat docks are illegal and do not have environmental clearance (per a Corps Engineer I know). I'll bet most of these people refused to get flood insurance and the houses are not likely built to code.

It is safe to say that most, if not all of the flood plains on the west side of Washington is subject to flooding. Volcanic activity increases the risk (Just look at the Snoqualmie floods of a few years ago or the Cowlitz floods.) And other floods have occurred in this area. All you have to do is observe the hillside erosion and the logjams in the streams to know it is not safe. "Building your house on sand" as the Bible says. The same situation exists in SoCal every year or two after the Malibu fires and the resulting mud flows. But yet, they rebuild. And the cycle begins again.

For what it is worth, the lahars (volcanic mud slides) that will occur when (not if Rainier blows) will be worse. I've heard predictions that Seattle will be "gone" in 20-30 minutes from the resulting mud slides.

My prayers go out and I include a prayer that people learn from this trajedy and do not repeat the same mistakes as last time, God willing.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top