Wintry mix spreads across Minnesota

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

Update at 10:30 p.m. Death toll increased

On Sunday, the number of people that have been confirmed dead from the mudslide has been increased from 18 to 21, according to Jason Biermann, program manager at the Snohomish County Department of Emergency Management.

Officials say 18 people died in the devastating landslide that hit northeast of Seattle last weekend. Crews are working to find and identify victims — and to account for people who had been listed as missing. In a bit of good news for the area, the number of missing has dropped from 90 to 30.

The list of the missing has continued to shrink since early reports that nearly 200 people were unaccounted for in the aftermath of the massive mudslide.


But even as crews recover bodies from the debris, medical examiners are having trouble identifying victims. Remains of as many as 10 bodies have been recovered that are not yet included in the official total, according to the 

"The slide hit with such force that often times, the rescuers are not recovering full, intact victims," says Jason Biermann of the Snohomish County Office of Emergency Management.

That's from a report filed from Arlington, Wash., for our Newscast unit by Chris Lehman of the Northwest News Network. He also describes how residents are coping:

 reports that local volunteers are helping with the recovery effort. They include Forrest Thompson, 18, a logger who the paper says helped convince officials that the locals could help.
"We pretty much just buck the root wads and trees off the top," Thompson tells the newspaper. "If we do find somebody underneath a pile of logs, we just buck everything out of the way, and dig it out by hand rather than by machine."  Copyright 2019 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Disasters

The list of the missing has continued to shrink since early reports that nearly 200 people were unaccounted for in the aftermath of the massive mudslide.


List of those missing in Washington mudslide shrinks by two-thirds

Go Deeper.

Like this?

News you can use in your inbox