Difficult task of locating mudslide victims continues
ARLINGTON, Wash. — Finding and identifying victims from one of the most lethal landslides in the nation’s history could stretch on for a long time, officials warned in describing the arduous work of extracting and trying to identify the human remains.
“It’s a very, very slow process. It was miserable to begin with, and as you all know, it has rained heavily in the last few days; it’s made the quicksand even worse,” Snohomish County Executive Director Gary Haakenson said at a Friday evening briefing. “I cannot possibly tell you how long this will last, or when or if they will find more bodies. We hope that we do, but right now there’s no telling.”
Crews may be finding more remains amid the destruction in the community of Oso northeast of Seattle, but Haakenson said the official death toll will remain at 17 until medical examiners can further complete their work.
Authorities have located at least eight other bodies in addition to the 17 and previously said they expect the number of fatalities from the March 22 mudslide to rise substantially.
Ninety people were listed as missing, but hope began fading by midweek when they had not checked in with friends or relatives, and no one had emerged from the pile alive.
Leslie Zylstra said everybody in town knows someone who died, and the village was coming to grips with the fact that many of the missing may remain entombed in the debris.
“The people know there’s no way anybody could have survived,” said Zylstra, who used to work in an Arlington hardware store. “They just want to have their loved ones, to bury their loved ones.”
Haakenson described for the first time Friday the difficulty of the searchers’ task. When a body is found, the spot is marked for a helicopter pickup. That only happens when the helicopters are able to fly in the wind and rain that has pummeled the search area. The victim is then placed in a truck in a holding area.
At the end of the day, all the recovered victims are transported to the medical examiner’s office about 20 miles away in Everett.
“Autopsies are performed, the process of identification takes place — if possible,” Haakenson said. “The identification process has been very, very challenging.”
Authorities have had to rely heavily on dental records, Haakenson told a Seattle newspaper. In a few cases, medical examiner’s investigators have had to use DNA testing.
People who have reported relatives missing have been asked by the medical examiner’s staff to provide identifying information, such as eye color, hair color and possible tattoos, and to have the missing person’s dental office compile records, he said.
In addition to bearing the stress of the disaster, townspeople were increasingly frustrated by the lack of information from authorities, said Mary Schoenfeldt, a disaster traumatologist who has been providing counseling services at schools and for public employees and volunteers. “The anger and frustration is starting to rise,” she said.
That’s normal for this phase of a disaster, as is the physical toll taken by not having eaten or slept normally in days, she said.
There were also signs of resilience. Handmade signs have appeared that say “Oso strong” and “530 pride” in reference to the stricken community and state Highway 530 that runs through it.
The catastrophe, which followed weeks of heavy rain, was shaping up to be one of deadliest landslides in U.S. history.
Previous slides triggered by storms included one that killed 150 people in Virginia in the wake of Hurricane Camille in 1969 and another that killed 129 when rain from Tropical Storm Isabel loosened tons of mud that buried Mameyes in Puerto Rican in 1985.
