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| credit: Ted S. Warren/AP |
Mainstream news coverage of the lethal landslide that wiped out the village of Oso, Washington has glossed over the fact that a catastrophic slide was
predicted by geologists going back to the 1950s. Even after a major landslide in 2006, new homebuilding permits were issued in the danger zone. The hillside has a history of slides dating back more than sixty years. There were slides in 1949, 1951, and 1967. The '67 slide took out a large revetment installed in 1962 to stabilize the river bank. The scarp was then 70 feet high in places. A 1999 report filed with the US Army Corp of Engineers warned of "the potential of catastrophic failure". Another geologist made a report to the Washington State Department of Ecology and Tulalip Tribes documenting the hill's slide history, but Snohomish County officials claim they did not know about the warnings. Snohomish County's emergency management head dissembled at a news conference Monday, when he said the clay hill know to geologists as "Slide Hill", "was considered very safe. This was a completely unforeseen slide." The County Executive and Public Works Director maintained the official line claiming there was no indication of a possible slide. After the 2006 slide, home construction noise competed with the sound of snapping trees as the landslide moved under the eroding force of the river.
Emergency responders now face treacherous conditions on the mudflow as they try to recover buried victums. A state geologist visiting the site in 1969 noted that aerial photographs as far back as 1932 show the clay hillside had been cut by the river, and that "travel across the slide surface is extremely treacherous because of hidden pockets of saturated material that will not support a man's weight". The newest slide is 30 to 40 feet deep in places; some bodies may never be recovered. The new scarp or cliff left by the slide is almost 600 feet high. An environmental manager of the Stillaguamish Tribe summed up the psychological denial involved in the disaster, "We always thought there was a possibility that a catastrophic event would come. We were hoping that wouldn't happen." Last Saturday, Oso's luck ran out.