Earthquake May Have Caused Washington Mudslide, Official Says

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Snohomish County Fire District 21/22 Chief Travis Hots speaks during a news conference about a deadly mudslide that happened two days earlier, Monday, March 24, 2014, in Arlington, Wash.

Image: Elaine Thompson/Associated Press

By Kurt Wagner2014-03-25 18:11:22 UTC

ARLINGTON, Washington — A small earthquake struck just days before the deadly mudslide ravaged a rural community in Washington state last Saturday morning, officials say.

John Pennington, director of Snohomish County Emergency Management, said at a Tuesday morning press briefing that a 1.1 magnitude earthquake struck on March 10 just 100-years behind the site of the mudslide. Officials were eyeing the quake as the cause.

While it wasn't discovered by authorities until Monday, Pennington says, he believes that there was nothing local authorities could have done to warn citizens that a disaster was imminent.

"This is just one that hit us," he said. "We [did] everything we could."

Flowers are left on debris next to a demolished home where a woman's body was found following a deadly mudslide, Tuesday, March 25, 2014, in Arlington, Wash.

Image: Elaine Thompson/Associated Press

The press briefing, which was held in a steady rain outside Arlington Police Department roughly 15 miles from the slide zone, came after Snohomish County officials worked the night searching for survivors in the massive field of destruction.

"Still no signs of life after a night of searching," District 21 Fire Chief Travis Hots said, as the rain continued to fall. "Fourteen confirmed dead and number expected to go up."

The fire chief said 176 people remained in the aftermath of a slide, which is now a pile of mud, wood, steel, and, presumably, bodies, that reaches 50-feet deep.

"We are going to do our very best to get everybody out of there," Hots said, before warning that search and rescue efforts may take some time. "This is going to be a very long event."

As rescuers remain focused on finding survivors, the Seattle Times reports that the area has been vulnerable to a slide like this for a number of years.

Since the 1950s, geological reports on the hill that buckled during the weekend in Snohomish County have included pessimistic analyses and the occasional dire prediction. But no language seems more prescient than what appears in a 1999 report filed with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, warning of “the potential for a large catastrophic failure.”

One local resident from nearby Darrington, Washington came to Tuesday’s press conference to get details on when more names will be released. The resident, who wishes to remain nameless, tells Mashable that like most small town, the communities near Oso are like a family, and she isn’t blaming officials for what happened.

Topics: Climate, mudslide, U.S., US & World, Washington