For someone who wants to drive from Darrington to Everett, each of the two available options takes about two hours.
One of them, however, is probably a lot easier on the car. There also are places to eat, talk on the phone and go to the bathroom.
Since the disastrous March 22 landslide that blocked Highway 530 east of Oso, most drivers have been using Highway 20 to get from Darrington to the I-5 corridor. This is the route recommended by the state Department of Transportation.
Four days after the slide, to create another option for drivers, the Mountain Loop Highway from Granite Falls to Darrington was opened for the season. The road is administered by Snohomish County.
Part of the Mountain Loop stretch was built on the former right-of-way of the Everett and Monte Cristo Railway, built in 1892 to haul gold copper, lead, and iron ores to smelters in Everett, according to HistoryLink.org. The tracks of the railroad were removed in 1932.
One section of the Mountain Loop Highway is a 14-mile, one-lane, gravel logging road. This stretch receives heavy snow and is closed every winter. The road was entirely shut down for four years, from 2003 to 2007, after it washed out in several places during a storm.
After the Oso slide, the state supplied snowblowers to open the road early for the year, county officials said.
The drive of 54 miles from Darrington to Granite Falls takes an hour and 40 minutes, according to the state. Add 20-plus minutes to Everett and it’s a little over two hours.
“Four-wheel drive or high-clearance vehicles are strongly recommended,” according to a description of the road on a U.S. Forest Service website. It has a 5-ton weight limit and is considered unsuitable for commercial trucks or freight.
Don Beavon, of Tulalip, drove the Mountain Loop Highway in his 1992 Honda Civic the day it opened. He said he made it from downtown Marysville to Darrington in an hour and 45 minutes.
He used quote marks around the word “highway” in an email about his experience.
“It was very muddy with potholes and temporary 25-mile per hour speed limit signs posted all along the way,” Beavon wrote. “I bottomed out a couple of times but numerous double-long dump trucks full of gravel were heading in to make improvements, as was a heavy-duty roller.”
The smoother route takes drivers from Darrington north to Rockport on Highway 530, west to Burlington on Highway 20 and south to Everett via I-5.
This route is 94 miles, compared to 70 from Darrington to Everett via Mountain Loop, but drivers can cover the distance in roughly the same amount of time. There are no gas stations or other services on the Mountain Loop, according to the state.
Genna Martin / The Herald Patricia Flajole (right) and son Pat look out over a flooded Highway 530 east of the Oso mudslide area on March 23, the day after the slide. The Flajole family owns a cabin just east of the slide area. The water, which had backed up because of river blockage, has mostly receded since then.
By Bill Sheets, Chris Winters, Jerry Cornfield and Rikki King, The Herald
Nearly three weeks after the devastating landslide in Oso, discussion of the fate of Highway 530 is beginning in earnest.
A series of community meetings has been scheduled for next week to gather input and discuss options for the daunting task of rebuilding the 1-mile stretch of highway that was smothered by the March 22 mudslide.
The section has been closed to the public since then, severing Darrington’s direct lifeline to Arlington and the I-5 corridor.
State and Snohomish County officials have been discussing with families of victims the delicate matter of digging out the highway while more people and belongings likely are still buried in the mud.
To date, 36 victims of the mudslide have been confirmed dead, with county officials releasing the names of three more victims Thursday.
Eight people are still missing.
“It’s kind of sacred ground for them and we want to make sure we’re going in there in the most respectful way possible,” said Travis Phelps, a spokesman for the state Department of Transportation.
In the meantime, officials are also beginning to look at the longer-term economic effect of the slide. Residents are deeply concerned about the effects on Darrington’s economy and culture if the town remains cut off for months.
“Of course we need that road open. That’s our lifeline to the outside world,” said Kevin Ashe, a part-owner of the Darrington IGA.
The only other major route into town is on Highway 20 through Skagit County, which turns a 45-minute drive to Everett into a two-hour detour.
Crews so far have removed most of the mud from a few hundred feet of Highway 530 on the western edge of the slide area.
“We’ve made some progress but not a heck of a lot,” Phelps said.
Because much of the highway is still buried, it’s too early to tell whether the road will be salvageable, he said.
“I’m sure some of it’s been damaged and some of it’s not,” Phelps said.
On the east side, part of the highway is still under water where the North Fork Stillaguamish River pooled up behind the slide. Even if the road can be repaired, the river’s ultimate course through the altered landscape will play a large part in determining if the road can remain in its current location, Phelps said.
If the road has to be rebuilt, topography of the surrounding area will be a factor, he said. Some steep hills are located south of the current highway right-of-way.
Engineers have begun studying possible routes, he said. When these become more developed, they’ll be shared with the public at later meetings.
“We’ve started looking at the terrain,” Phelps said.
Because of all these factors, it’s impossible to estimate when the highway could reopen or how much it might cost, he said.
The economic damage isn’t limited to just the highway. Damage to houses and other properties that were destroyed in the slide area is estimated at $6.77 million, according to a county assessor’s report released Thursday. About $919,000 of that was from the flooding.
More than 34 houses were destroyed and at least 10 manufactured homes, in addition to vacant lots, camping sites and other kinds of buildings, according to the report.
Because of the extent of the slide and the flooding, some areas have not been assessed yet, especially east of the slide near where a berm is being built.
While the federal government likely will reimburse the costs of rebuilding Highway 530, the longer-term recovery period is likely to come out of local pockets.
The economic hit to Darrington could be serious due to the reduced access and increased costs of getting to the town.
One worry, for example, is at what point people who commute into Darrington for jobs, or those who commute from Darrington to Arlington or the rest of the county, will decide the hassle of the commute isn’t worth the job.
In looking toward the longer term, the Puget Sound Regional Council has recommended that $5 million in federal funding be used to support economic recovery in Darrington.
The PSRC, an intergovernmental body that distributes about $240 million in federal transportation funding annually, will perform an unusual workaround to free up money that can contribute to Darrington’s recovery.
The PSRC’s federal money is earmarked for specific transportation projects, but some of those projects won’t come to fruition this year, leaving the PSRC money without a designated project. Snohomish County identified an ongoing project — the North Road project between Lynnwood and Mill Creek — that was funded with $9.8 million in local funds on top of $3.2 million in federal money.
By directing $5 million more in federal money to the North Road project, the PSRC will free up the same amount in county money from that project, which can in turn be redirected to projects in the Darrington area.
“County money is much more flexible than these federal dollars,” PSRC spokesman Rick Olson said.
The county money will then be targeted at projects that will have an economic benefit for Darrington.
Darrington’s plan to add curbs, gutters, sidewalks and a storm drainage system to Fir Street has been identified as one immediate need. Other projects that might be considered are upgrading the Whitehorse Trail or more street improvements in the town itself.
These projects would not be eligible for disaster funds, but by directing more county money to them, they would have a positive economic impact and take a little of the burden off Darrington. An upgraded Whitehorse Trail, for example, could be a tourist draw for the town, Olson said.
The issue moves to the PSRC’s executive committee next week, where it stands a good chance of passing.
“I think the PSRC has a good history of counties supporting each other, especially in times of need like this,” said Snohomish County Councilman Dave Somers, who sits on the committee.
These smaller measures may help soften the impact of the closure of Highway 530, but it will by no means eliminate it.
After the collapse of the Skagit River Bridge on I-5 last May, a temporary span was in place less than a month later.
Highway 530 is an altogether different animal, Phelps said. Some kind of temporary road may be considered, but it is still too soon to make that decision.
“Here we have a much bigger emergency response underway,” he said.
There’s no one federal agency to turn to for help. Money could potentially come from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Federal Highway Administration and others, Phelps said.
“It’s going to be kind of an ongoing discussion,” Phelps said.
Meetings
Snohomish County and the state Department of Transportation have scheduled three meetings to discuss the situation regarding Highway 530, which was blocked by the March 22 landslide.
*7-9 p.m. Monday, April 14, at the Darrington Community Center, 570 Sauk Ave.;
*7-9 p.m. Tuesday, April 15, at Oso Community Chapel, 22318 Highway 530;
*6-8 p.m. Wednesday, April 16, in the Main Hall at the Stillaguamish Senior Center, 18308 Smokey Point Blvd., Arlington.
DARRINGTON, Washington (Reuters) – Search teams picked through mud-caked debris for a fifth day on Wednesday looking for scores of people still missing in a deadly Washington state landslide, as officials reported finding more bodies while acknowledging that some victims’ remains may never be recovered.
The known death toll stood at 24, with as many as 176 people still unaccounted for near the rural town of Oso, where a rain-soaked hillside collapsed on Saturday and cascaded over a river and a road, engulfing dozens of homes on the opposite bank.
The latest tally did not include an unspecified number of bodies that state police spokesman Bob Calkins said had been found on Wednesday. He declined to give further details.
Earlier in the day, local emergency management officials sought to fend off criticism of property development that was permitted just across the river from the caved-in slope after previous landslides in the area.
As hope faded that any survivors might be plucked from the muck and debris that blanketed an area covering about one square mile (2.6 square km), residents of the stricken community and nearby towns braced for an expected rise in the casualty count.
“My son’s best friend is out there, missing,” said John Pugh, 47, a National Guardsman who lives in the neighboring village of Darrington. “My daughter’s maid of honor’s parents are missing. It’s raw. And it will be for a long time.”
Asked whether he expected the death toll to rise significantly, Governor Jay Inslee told CNN: “Yes, I don’t think anyone can reach any other conclusion.
“It’s been very sad that we have not been able to find anyone living now for probably 36 or 48 hours,” he said. “The most discouraging thing is we were hopeful that we would find folks who might be protected by a car or a structure, but the force of this landslide just defies imagination.”
About 200 search personnel, many wearing rain gear and hard hats, painstakingly combed through the disaster zone under cloudy skies on Wednesday, taking advantage of a break from Tuesday’s rain showers to hasten their search for more victims.
Snohomish County Battalion Fire Chief Steve Mason, directing part of the operation, said teams were making slow but steady progress in locating additional remains.
“There are finds going on continually. They are finding people now,” he told reporters visiting the search site. “People are under logs, mixed in. It’s a slow process.”
But Jan McClelland, a volunteer firefighter from Darrington who was among the first to arrive at the scene and has spent long days digging through the muck since then, conceded it was possible some bodies may end up forever entombed at the site.
“I’m fearful we won’t find everyone,” she said. “That’s the reality of it.”
NO HUMAN HEAT SOURCES DETECTED
Bill Quistorf, the chief pilot for the county sheriff’s office, recounted that helicopter crews conducting low-altitude scans of the disaster zone with infrared equipment found no human heat sources in the hours after the slide.
“We located one dog in the bushes, and that was it,” he said, also acknowledging that some remains may never be recovered.
At the same time, authorities sought to whittle down their list of unaccounted-for individuals, with missing-persons detectives from the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office working to resolve likely redundancies on a roster of people whose fate remained unknown.
County officials also started to address criticism for allowing new home construction on parts of the disaster site after a 2006 landslide in the same vicinity, which followed numerous reports detailing the risks of slides dating back to the 1950s.
A 1999 study by geologist Daniel Miller for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had warned of the potential for a “large catastrophic failure” in the area, about 55 miles northeast of Seattle.
“There’s definitely a blame-game going on,” Miller told Reuters. “I’ve always thought it’s inappropriate to allow development in flood plains, in areas at risk of landslides, in part because of the danger to human life and also in part because when something happens, even if no one is hurt, public agencies end up coming in to make repairs,” he said.
The county’s emergency management director, John Pennington, told reporters local authorities had spent millions of dollars on work to reduce landslide risks in the area after the 2006 event.
He suggested that while officials and residents were aware of vulnerability to unstable hill slopes, Saturday’s tragedy came out of the blue.
“We really did a great job of mitigating the potential for smaller slides to come in and impact the community,” Pennington said. “So from 2006 to this point, the community did feel safe; they fully understood the risks.”
But he also said: “People knew that this is a landslide-prone area. Sometimes big events just happen. Sometimes large events that nobody sees happen. And this event happened, and I want to find out why. I don’t have those answers right now.”
Search and rescue operations tapered off overnight but ramped up to full strength again at first light on Wednesday. Searchers used dogs to pinpoint possible locations of victims, as well as electronic equipment such as listening devices and cameras capable of probing voids in the debris.
“We’re not backing off. We’re still going at this with all eight cylinders to get everyone out there who is unaccounted for,” local fire chief Travis Hots said.
The presumed tally of dead rose on Tuesday night from 14 to 24 when county officials reported that search crews laboring in a steady drizzle had recovered two more bodies from the disaster zone and located the remains of eight additional victims.
Eight people were injured but survived the slide, including a 22-week-old baby rescued with his mother and listed in critical condition but improving. The mother and three other survivors also remained hospitalized.
The slide already ranks as one of the worst in the United States. In 1969, 150 people were killed in landslides and floods in Virginia, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
(Additional reporting by Bill Rigby in Seattle, Bryan Cohen in Arlington, Washington, and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Cythia Johnston, Dan Grebler and Gunna Dickson)
