Joshua Trujillo/AP Residents gather in a circle during a vigil at the Darrington Community Center on Saturday on the event’s two-week anniversary.
Joshua Trujillo/AP Snohomish County District 21 Fire Chief Travis Hots is hugged by a resident during the vigil to mourn the 33 victims now confirmed dead.
MARCUS YAM/AP Following the funeral service for Linda McPherson, a victim of the mudslide, residents join together for a community meal, Saturday.
JASON REDMOND/REUTERS Pastors Les Hagen (center L) and Mike De Luca (center R) pray before the candlelight vigil.
Lindsey Wasson/AP Gov. Jay Inslee, joined by a host of local officials as well as Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson to his left, speak during a news conference at Paine Field, Sunday after returning from a survey of the mudslide.
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EVERETT, Wash. – The death toll from the landslide that hit the Washington town of Oso has risen to 33.
The Snohomish County medical examiner’s office says it has received three more victims than previously reported. Of those, 30 have been identified.
The latest name is 30-year-old Billy L. Spillers of Arlington. Like the others, he died of multiple blunt force injuries in the March 22 slide that crushed a residential area along the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River about 55 miles northeast of Seattle.
The huge March 22 landslide in Oso was one of the worst natural disasters in state history.
Taylor, Langton, her four children, her mother and her great aunt survived. And like others who are still alive – either by luck or circumstance – they are trying to make sense of the tragedy.
LoAnna Langton’s husband, Kristopher Langton, also lived. When the slide struck, he had been on his way back home from an errand. After a few seconds of listening to his wife scream on the phone, he raced into the muck to try to reach his family.
“I was scared out of my mind,” LoAnna Langton recalled days after the landslide. She was worried about her husband and about getting her children to safety.
I was scared out of my mind.
Emergency workers tried to stop Kristopher Langton, but he pushed on through the mud and over trees and other debris. He helped pull three adults and a baby out of the debris. By the time he reached their house, it was surrounded by water and his family was safely away.
Hours later, LoAnna Langton turned to Taylor and asked, “How did we survive that?”
“I bless my house every day,” Taylor said. The ordained minister was only half-joking.
The Langtons and their friend and neighbor, Taylor, are trying to rebuild their lives and find meaning in their survival.
LoAnna Langton says, “God protected us.”
This was the second time her family had a close call with disaster. About a year and a half ago, when they lived in her hometown of Ellensburg, the 2012 wildfire known as the Taylor Bridge Fire skipped their house and destroyed 61 other homes and blackened 36 square miles around them.
“We figure that God has plans either for us or our children,” she said in an interview.
Taylor is thinking of building a meditation chapel in Darrington, where his friends and neighbors could find some peace and tranquility.
He said he’s heard probably a dozen stories of other people who survived because of a fluke of circumstances. Some were delayed returning home or just missed the slide by minutes.
Pastor Mike DeLuca of Darrington’s First Baptist Church said he’s been hearing those stories as well. A man who was scheduled to work on a roof in Oso around the time of the slide talked about his decision to not go to that job because he wanted to be at his son’s wrestling tournament in Anacortes.
DeLuca said it’s been hard for the survivors.
A grandmother who belongs to his church was worried about her granddaughter, who is in the sixth grade in Darrington. She was a mentor to a kindergarten student who was killed in the slide.
We figure that God has plans either for us or our children.
“When she found out her little friend was killed, she was devastated,” DeLuca said. The grandmother and DeLuca tried to help the girl process her grief but nothing seemed to help until grandma adopted a puppy and the granddaughter had “someone else to take care of.”
DeLuca said he needed help himself and has turned to his fellow religious leaders for counseling.
“It hit me about three days later,” DeLuca said. “I had this sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.”
He said that feeling was guilt for not being out there and helping pull people out of the debris. His son-in-law reminded him that a 71-year-old didn’t belong in the search and rescue effort.
So DeLuca does his rescue work with words instead.
“My phone is ringing off the hook,” he said. Weddings have been postponed to make room for funerals and grief counseling.
DeLuca doubts they’ll ever be able to forget that day.
“When we go down that road, we’ll see that scar. We will remember,” he said.
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