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Geologists Warned of Washington State Mudslides For Decades
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "The Seattle Times reports that since the 1950s, geological reports on the hill that buckled last weekend, killing at least 17 residents in Snohomish County in Washington State, have included pessimistic analyses and the occasional dire prediction. But no language seems more prescient than what appears in a 1999 report filed warning of 'the potential for a large catastrophic failure.' Daniel Miller, a geomorphologist, documented the hill's landslide conditions in a report written in 1997 for the Washington Department of Ecology and the Tulalip Tribes. Miller knows the hill's history, having collected reports and memos from the 1950s, 1960s, 1980s and 1990s and has a half-dozen manila folders stuffed with maps, slides, models and drawings, all telling the story of an unstable hillside that has defied efforts to shore it up. That's why he could not believe what he saw in 2006, when he returned to the hill within weeks of a landslide that crashed into and plugged the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River, creating a new channel that threatened homes on a street called Steelhead Drive. Instead of seeing homes being vacated, he saw carpenters building new ones. 'Frankly, I was shocked that the county permitted any building across from the river,' says Miller. 'We've known that it's been failing. It's not unknown that this hazard exists.'" (More, below.)
"The hill that collapsed is referred to by geologists with different names, including Hazel Landslide and Steelhead Haven Landslide, a reference to the hillside's constant movement. After the hill gave away in 1949, in '51, in '67, in '88, in 2006, residents referred to it simply as 'Slide Hill.' 'People knew that this was a landslide-prone area,' says John Pennington. Geomorphologist Tracy Drury said there were discussions over the years about whether to buy out the property owners in the area, but those talks never developed into serious proposals. 'I think we did the best that we could under the constraints that nobody wanted to sell their property and move.'"
And still not much is being done to stop it. Wait 30 years and you'll see this same article here, only referencing global warming.
"I wanna build that wood-made doll house on the side of the collapsing hill, on a shore of a constant tide, at the bottom of a restless avalanche, in the way of a hundred hurricanes, next to an ever-flooding river, at the feet of a volcano! And you ain't gonna stop me!"
Why do they hate our freedom to build somewhere incredibly stupid and dangerous?
The hurricane situation is a lot stupider than this one. The states force insurance companies to provide insurance to everyone and dictate that the rates can't be too high. So the insurance company raises the rate state-wide to cover the costs of the people living in the most prone areas. My mother-in-laws Florida home that just sold for a whopping $60k had premium that was $5000 per year before she sold it. That's INSANE. But the majority of the states revenue comes from the coast so that's what they protect.
As a tech working in Southern California with a B.A. in Geology, I can tell you that most geologic reports that are prepared are typically all but ignored by developers, leading to many problems down the road, and occasional tragedies such as this. I know of a large building built in the San Andreas Fault Zone that did not have the proper footings in place, and has sunk as a result (not from any earthquake, but from the nature of the fractured strata beneath the site), costing more taxpayer money to save it (this being a state institution).
Geologist warnings serve more to set insurance rates then to avoid issues, and many lives have been lost, and will be lost as a result. Geologist by the nature of their science look at the land in terms of what will happen over time, while Developers are concerned with only if their investment will pay off in the short term, assuming the added risk as just an increase in insurance costs taken from their bottom lines.
The stupidity of a bunch of people that believe academics can afford better publicity people than oil companies is amazing. This is exactly the same thing. The geologist states facts once and thinks it's settled. The housing developers have a staff of people who keep asking different officials uni they find one who listens. Then they keep commissioning secret reports until they find a tame "expert" land slide denialist. When they find this person they pay a huge amount more to publish the report.
These are people who are killing people for money. Even of the denialist "expert" is an idiot who never realises what he's done, the industrialist behind him knows exactly what is going on. What should we do?
So, if someone said to you, "your house is likely to catch fire in the future", and then your house caught fire 15 years later, you'd be thinking "damnit! I was warned this would happen, I should have listened to that guy 15 years ago and moved"??"
if that person said it would catch fire in the future because of faulty wiring (or something else) then i'd fix the wiring.
Ah, the arguments of the willfully ignorant. I wish I were still a conservative. No nuances, no questions. Everything had a trite simple answer.
Reality does not so neatly fit into a box.
House fires happen rapidly. They are also largely preventable. And even though one person's house fire may be a tragedy, pouring water on it puts out the fire. (Remember kids: the fire department exists to prevent your house fire from burning down the rest of the city, not to save your house)
Mudslides, like earthquakes, are triggered by complex conditions that are not knowable by humans in advance (with any degree of certainty). They also cannot be prevented or controlled. There is no "Mudslide Department" because there is no response. By the time you find out about it, the mudslide is over and the damage is done.
This case is very simple to explain: no one wants to be the person who "wastes" taxpayer dollars buying out homeowners and tearing down houses when the potential disaster can strike anywhere between tomorrow and 50 years from now. So county officials, housing developers, and maybe to some degree homeowners all chose to ignore the report and get on with their lives. That works great, right up until the moment when everyone died.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
It's hell on Earth here! Raining at the moment! When it stops it'll go back to our 9 straight months of greyness! No jobs! Unless hack sacking weed smoking hippies who make careers out of pan handling count! Furious volcanoes! Floods! People being chased by landslides! Don't move here! It sucks! Stay where you are! It's mostly just more pavement! Plus you can't pump your own gas! And you get a holy reaming on your property taxes! Here be dragons! And rabid beavers!