The Glade 4.0

I'm sure you've seen it on the news...

They still don't know how many people are missing, but they are estimating it's over 100.

Here a local newspaper is posting images and tweets from various sources.

Some of those pictures are just flabbergasting...
http://www.heraldnet.com/article/201403 ... -mudslide-

Saturday morning. Most people are home at that time. Very tragic.

Being buried in a mudslide is nearly impossible to survive. The slide will fill nearly any void, as it acts as a liquid. Some folks have gotten lucky, but it's pretty much a recovery mission now, the rescue phase is over.

I was perusing twitter and the local news sites for updates on this story today.

This picture shows some local volutneers and National Guardspeople searching for the missing.

Forget the physical challenges, exhaustion, cold, etc.. i can't fathom the emotional drain that would have...
They are searching for their co-workers, friends, family, some of the infants...

Some of the interviews were heartbreaking. They talked about finding the remains of a baby's nursery, and breaking down in tears.

It struck me today that there was a smaller slide there in the past; did people die in that one, too? I wonder, at some point, if they'll just have to leave the bodies be. Really, if there are over 100 people dead in this, it's going to be next to impossible to retrieve them all from a square mile of 15-foot deep mud.

_________________
This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

You can see where the structures and the highway were relative to the slide using the Seattle Times interactive map

http://seattletimes.com/flatpages/local ... slide.html

Most of the people saved, and the bodies that have been recovered so far have been near the leading edge of the slide flow (seen in the picture above).

The deepest part of the slide is on the other side of the river from where the homes and highway were, so there likely aren't any (or very few) buried there.

That said, the recovery teams have already warned that some bodies may never be found, or at least not for a very long time.

Edit: And yes, this is an area that is prone to slides. I've personally never been to Oso, so I'm not sure how obvious the danger was to the people living there. I know that the slide covered a state highway (some of the people killed/missing were driving on that road). I'm guessing it wasn't readily apparent, or obvious to the average person.

I saw a TV interview today with a geologist who was hired by the State Department of Ecology to do a study on slide danger in this area, and the potential impact a slide would have on.... the fish in the river. His report was that the danger to the fish was extremely high. Sadly, apparently, it never occurred to the folks on the Department of Ecology that there were actual humans living there too.. so the report was stuffed in a drawer.....

OK, thanks. So sad.

That's a nice map.

_________________
This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

Here is a lidar photo that highlights the area minus foliage. It's pretty telling in my mind.



It's come out recently that the state had identified the area as high risk for slides. They even restricted logging in the area above the slide to some degree to manage the risk... Unfortunately, they only notified people as part of the process of applying for a building permit. Only one person had received said letter and he decided not to build because of it (someone else ended up purchasing that property and was living in a trailer when the slide hit.. and is still missing).

No one else who owned property there had been notified of the slide risk. Anyone who was living in structures built prior to that time, or who were living in temporary structures (trailers, motor homes, RV's, Campers, etc... ) would have had to make this discovery on their own.

Another notated version of the same (or similar) image