As Scientists Examine Landslide, Questions About Logging's Potential Role
While there is no "smoking gun," clear-cutting and river erosion emerge as possible contributors.
The March 22 landslide wiped out an entire neighborhood near the small town of Oso, leaving at least 27 dead and another 22 missing. But answers to what caused the hillside to come thundering down that Saturday morning remain elusive. (See "Mudslides Explained: Behind the Washington State Disaster.")
Even as the search for victims continues, researchers are preparing to descend on the mountain to conduct a post mortem of the slide. They want to figure out what set the giant slide loose, to see if anything can be done to prevent such disasters in the future, and to learn if human activities played a part in triggering it.
"We have a full-scale laboratory experiment—of course, a very tragic one—and we
