3 dead, 5 seriously injured, up to 10 still missing in western Washington mudslide - an entire hillside gave way and the debris is blocking a river, threatening major flooding, could cause bridge collapses.
this same area had a major slide in '06 and is known to be unstable

(I believe this is a new or near March rainfall record for that particular area)

[seattletimes.com]

Locals if you want to help, Sno Co Red Cross needs cash donations (no stuff, just cash)
[www.facebook.com] (city of Arlington's facebook page)

eeesh, 8 dead, many still missing.
1 mile of highway under the mud, no idea how many cars may have been under there.

Still too unstable for rescuers.

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Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where the weather is wonderful even when it isn't.

Reports now have 108 missing - but authorities say that is a soft number and hopefully most will be found elsewhere. That is more than 1/2 the town population.

It brings back nightmares for me - in 1998 during Hurricane Mitch, I covered two mudslides in Nicaragua & Honduras that killed several thousand people (the full number was never known, but could have come close to 10,000). I was there less than 12 hours after the slide went through.

I suffered some PTSD from that incident and it took me several years to get past it. Events like this bring it all back though. It was easily the most horrifying thing I ever dealt with in my career. Two particulars still come to mind - a small child, ~3, who could not give any details about his name or family. I often wondered if any family ever found him. The other was an elderly woman who lost her entire family - she survived only because the wall of mud took home home but left the outhouse she was in. Once again I wonder what ever became of her.

I'm babbling and I apologize - just my way of coping with the memories.

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“No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.” -- François de La Rochefoucauld

"Those who cannot accept the past are condemned to revise it." -- Geo. Mathias

The German word for contraceptive is “Schwangerschaftsverhütungsmittel”. By the time you finished saying that, it’s too late

As a news story, this is being subsumed by the Malaysian plane.

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Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where the weather is wonderful even when it isn't.

Quote
Speedy
As a news story, this is being subsumed by the Malaysian plane.

I was just listening to an AM radio station on the way home (not sure what network) and some national broadcaster described it as in
Arlington (wrong city)
a fishing town (what?? not on the coast, it's a logging/farming town)
and in "eastern" Washington. um, no. It's in Western Washington, and that's a very clear divide (the Cascade mountain range)

anyway, yeah, local coverage is pretty good at Seattle Times.com and King5 or komo, NPR was pretty good.

14 confirmed dead, a number sure to rise as the days go by and rescuers can get in there. hillside is still very unstable.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/24/2014 07:58PM by Lemon Drop.