March 27, 2014 -- Updated 2202 GMT (0602 HKT)
Officials say they will exhaust all options trying to find people alive
in the devastation but they fear the death toll of 16 will go up sharply
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Landslide search: 'I don't think anything could prepare you'
March 27, 2014 -- Updated 2212 GMT (0612 HKT)
Rescues, sad discoveries after landslide
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW: Rescuers trudge through knee-deep mud in landslide search
- NEW: Houses "look like they've been put in a blender," fire commander says
- Landslide toll stands at 16 confirmed dead, more expected; 90 unaccounted for
- "My heart is telling me that I'm not giving up yet," fire chief says
Saturday's collapse
dragged several homes downhill with it, scattering their contents among
hundreds of acres of earth and smashed trees.
"Anything that anyone
would have in a neighborhood is now strewn out here," said Steve Mason, a
Snohomish County fire battalion chief.
"We've had houses that
have been more intact than others," Mason told reporters at the edge of
the slide. "Some of them look like they've been put in a blender and
dropped on the ground, so you have basically a big pile of debris."
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The landslide near Oso,
about 60 miles northeast of Seattle, has claimed about two dozen lives.
The official death toll stood at 16 on Thursday afternoon, but at least
eight more bodies that have been found won't be added to the count until
medical examiners can identify them, District Chief Travis Hots said.
When they do, "You're going to see these numbers increase
substantially," he said.
Another 90 remained
unaccounted for as rescuers dug into the ground with chainsaws, pumps
and their hands in hopes of finding survivors -- or least bringing
solace to family members by finding remains.
"Sometimes it takes
several hours to get somebody out of an area," Hots said. When a body is
extracted, "You can almost hear a pin drop out there. You see seasoned
veterans in this business, they start to tear up. Their eyes get
glossy."
No survivors have been
found since the weekend, but Hots said searchers haven't given up hope
of rescuing at least some those still missing.
"My heart is telling me
that I'm not giving up yet," he said. "My philosophy is even if we say
this is just a recovery mission, we're still going at it full steam
ahead."
Among the dead was Summer Raffo, who was driving past the area when the slide hit.
"My heart is broken. It's broken," her mother, Rae Smith, said.
And pointing out homes on a map, volunteer rescuer Peter Selvig noted the seemingly random nature of the fatalities.
"This guy lived and his wife died ... we were on the school board together for about 30 years," Selvig said.
More rain made the mud worse Thursday, slowing the search, rescuers reported.
"Just walking through
it, it's almost impossible," said Senior Airman Charlotte Gibson, part
of an Air National Guard squadron assisting the search. "You'll fall in
about waist-deep in some areas, knee-deep in some areas. You're just
wading through it."
And Master Sgt. Chris Martin told reporters, "I don't think anything could prepare you for what you see out there."
Workers were building an
emergency road to nearby Darrington along with pathways of plywood and
logs in hopes of making it easier to get people and equipment into the
search zone Thursday afternoon. Mason said the mud also holds the
remains of septic systems, requiring searchers to wash thoroughly at the
end of their shifts. And the collapse cut off the Stillaguamish River,
causing the water to back up into what's now a small lake, he said.
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"You have homes on this side that are now islands," he said. On another side, "Cars are under water."
The area affected in the
most recent calamity has been hit before, in 1951, 1967, 1988 and 2006.
Daniel Miller, a geomorphologist who co-wrote a report in 1999 for the
Army Corps of Engineers that looked at options to reduce sediments from
area landslides, said that none of these events resulted in deaths,
though at least the most recent one damaged houses.
This history, along with
erosion from Stillaguamish River and worries about overlogging,
prompted some mitigation and other efforts. A 2010 plan identified the
area swept away as one of several "hot spots," John Pennington,
Snohomish County's emergency management director, told reporters
Wednesday.
The county had been
saturated by "amazing" rains for weeks on end that made the ground even
less stable, Pennington added. Then there was a small, recent earthquake
that may or may not have shaken things up more.
But he said no one
anticipated an event of the scale of what happened Saturday morning:
"Sometimes, big events just happen." And he said residents knew the area
was "landslide-prone" -- an assertion one of them challenged.
"Nobody ever told us
that there were geology reports," Robin Youngblood told CNN's Anderson
Cooper. "... This is criminal, as far as I'm concerned."
With more rain in the
forecast Thursday and Friday, Snohomish County Public Works Director
Steve Thompson said rescuers are working with one eye on the weather.
"Right now there's no risk of further slides, but we're watching the rain," Thompson said Thursday.
CNN's Gabe Ramirez and Ana Cabrera contributed to this report.
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