Sound Sleep
Up river from Stanwoodopolis maybe 30 miles or so, a mountain of mud slipped … and in 3 seconds covered up the roadway, 30 houses and the entire flow of the North Fork of the Stilly River. As of today 14 people are dead, but over 100 are missing. Flashflood warnings are up and the towns of Oso, Arlington, Silvana and Stanwoodopolis are on evacuation alert. If the backed up Stillaguamish lets loose suddenly, a deluge will descend downstream like the Johnstown Flood.
On the news I hear folks starting to point fingers. At the state. At geologists. At the timber company who clearcut above this slide. At the County Planning Department. At the folks who allowed citizens to build under a known danger. At the Fire Department for not doing enough. At Emergency Management for not allowing volunteers to wade into the square mile of muck and mud that is more like quicksand than not, making volunteers more like victims than not. It is, to say the obvious, a mess.
We hate government these days. We hate it regulating us. We hate it enforcing their rules. Then we blame it for not doing enough. One of the dead is the leader of Freedom County who railed for years about government intrusion in his life. I wonder what he’d have to say now? We blame government for not saving more lives, we blame it for not preventing those deaths. But we’re glad hundreds of firefighters, state troopers, medics, cops and engineers are up there working 24/7. No doubt we’ll sue some of them soon enough….
It only took two days before the fault-finding started, no pun really intended. We don’t even have the bodies recovered, the road cleared or the river undammed. I was out fishing along the coast of the South End yesterday. I couldn’t help but wonder how the folks in the bluff houses were sleeping. Or the ones below the bluff. Were they cursing the Island County Building Department for issuing a building permit? Were they calling their insurance agent? Were they eyeballing the banks beneath their precipice and noticing the previous slides? Were they already on the phone to their attorneys just in case the worst happens???
I don’t know … but I’d be wearing a seat belt to bed. And I would not be sleeping soundly. Pun intended.
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