More than a dozen landslides keep crews busy; how to check your risk and prepare

The Puget Sound area has already seen more than a dozen landslides since Monday. The rain stopped Tuesday for most of the region, but the landslides did not. And with more moisture on the way, many steep hills in the area are at risk of further slide.

The highest concentration of slides have been in King County.

“We’ve seen reports of 10 or 12 landslides throughout the county,” said Brendan McCluskey, the director of King County Emergency Management.

Two slides have happened in Auburn. One of them in the 3000 block of 105th Pl SE was still completely blocking the road on Tuesday. City of Auburn public works crews said teams would be back on Wednesday to clear it out.

“It’s definitely alarming, considering we live on a big hill,” said Drew Peterson, who lives at an apartment complex near the slide.

Record-setting rain over the past two days, plus a wet fall season that also brought flooding in November, mean extremely saturated soil.

“Just a lot of rain. Loosens everything up, bound to happen with all the steep hills like this, it’s crazy,” said Eric Knutson, an Auburn public works employee. He was putting out orange cones around the slide debris pile Tuesday.

“People still do go around the ‘road closed’ signs, so just adding extra reflectors so nobody hits it at night,” Knutson said.

Some residents say they are seeing slides trigger in places for the first time.

“I’m just shocked because I’ve never seen that and I’ve lived here for about 12 years,” said Jen Boctor, who lives in Renton near Lake Washington Boulevard North and Burnett Avenue North.

With more rain on the way, King County Emergency Management is urging you to prepare

McCluskey says the first thing to do is to check for landslide risk exactly where you live. King County helps run hazardready.org, where people can look up their address and get a breakdown of risk for landslides and other disasters.

USGS also helps run a landslide inventory website that tracks landslide risk and allows users to check their own addresses to see slide-prone areas.

People who live at or near slide risk areas should look for warning signs during and after heavy rainfall.

“If the windows never stuck before but now they’re starting to stick, or if they hear a creaking they’ve never heard before,” McCluskey said.

Other warning signs from the King County Emergency Management website include:

• Doors or windows stick or jam for the first time.
• New cracks appear in plaster, tile, brick or foundation.
• Outside walls, walks or stairs begin pulling away from the building.
• Slowly developing, widening cracks appear on the ground or on paved areas such as streets or driveways.
• Underground utility lines break.
• Bulging ground appears at the base of a slope.
• Water breaks through the ground surface in new locations.
• Fences, retaining walls, utility poles or trees tilt or move.
• You hear a faint rumbling sound that increases in volume as the landslide nears. The ground slopes downward in one specific direction and may begin shifting in that direction under your feet.
• Sinkholes — a sinkhole occurs when groundwater dissolves a vulnerable land surface, such as limestone, causing the land surface to collapse from a lack of support.

The county says people should make arrangements for housing in the event you need to evacuate, and to have at least two evacuation routes in case one is blocked.

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