Wintry mix spreads across Minnesota

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This post was last updated at 7:52 p.m. ET.


Already sad news from a tiny community north of Seattle turned even more grim on Monday. 

 that they had found six more bodies, bringing the death toll to 14.


What's most stunning, perhaps, is that officials expect that number to climb, because they have received reports of about 108 people still missing.

NPR's Martin Kaste reports that officials weren't saying the death toll will exceed 100. "Some of the names [on the list] are uncertain ... some of the reports are vague," he told our Newscast Desk. It's likely that some of those on the list weren't in the area at the time of the slide.

At the same time, he says, emergency officials repeated that the millions of yards of mud couldn't have come crashing down on the 49 residential lots in the community of Oso at a worse time. It happened on Saturday morning, when many people were likely to be at home, rather than at work or school.

Snohomish County officials have increased the number missing to 176, although they stress that they believe the list contains many duplicate names. The number earlier in the day was 108.

Snohomish County Sheriff's Office said because of the potential for more slide activity, some rescue crews have been pulled from the search area.


"Geologists are surveying the scene to [assess] any risk," the sheriff's office said in a statement.

About 100 responders are still continuing their search, however.

 Now, Martin adds during a conversation recorded for today's

that searchers continue to face a very dangerous situation. The debris, he says, "is treacherous and shifting. ... It's [like] quicksand mixed with timber."
Also on 

 will talk about the three factors he thinks are likely to have contributed to the slide:


-- The hill's "fairly weak, glacial material." It was basically, he says, "a wall of sand and silt that's hundreds of feet tall."

-- The river at the bottom of the valley that "has been cutting into the toe of he slope."

There had slides there before, Montgomery also notes, and one lesson from this tragedy might be this: "Slopes that have failed in the past may cut loose without warning."

 to find an NPR station that broadcasts or streams 

Our original post, which was updated at 12:30 p.m. ET with news of the higher number of missing, picks up the story:

Searchers pulled more bodies from a soupy mixture of muck and debris, bringing the death toll to eight, after a massive mudslide over the weekend smashed through a community in rural western Washington state.

In a news conference Monday morning (local time), Snohomish County Emergency Management Director John Pennington said a consolidated list of missing and unaccounted-for contained 108 names.

"It's a soft 108," he said, and doesn't mean there are that many injuries or fatalities.

Pennington said he anticipates the number will "decline dramatically" as officials work through the report.

He said some of the missing included construction workers coming into the neighborhood and people who happened to be driving by when the mudslide occurred on Saturday morning.

Pennington said authorities were still hopeful, but that "we have not found anyone alive on this pile since Saturday."

He said at least 49 homes and other structures had been damaged or destroyed in the mudslide.

 on Sunday as saying he and other rescuers had used helicopters to fly over the wreckage, where they spotted four bodies Sunday, adding to four others found the day before.


NPR's Martin Kaste, reporting from Seattle, says millions of cubic yards of soil clogged the narrow river valley east of Interstate 5 about 50 miles north of Seattle.

"We didn't see or hear any signs of life out there today," Snohomish County Fire District 21 Chief Travis Hots said. "It's very disappointing to all emergency responders on scene."


On Sunday, officials said there were at least 18 people trapped in the mud. The 

 says more casualties are likely, as the slide destroyed 30 or more homes and a mile-long stretch of Highway 530.


Officials think recent heavy rainfall made the ground unstable, triggering the mudslide.

Disasters

Mark Memmott

Author

Searchers pulled more bodies from a soupy mixture of muck and debris after a massive mudslide over the weekend smashed through a community in rural Washington state.

8 confirmed dead in Washington mudslide

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