(Reuters) — At least 25 people were confirmed dead almost a week after landslide sent mud crashing into dozens of rural Washington state homes, searchers said, as locals faced up to the prospect that some of the 90 still missing might never be found.
A rain-soaked hillside collapsed near the tiny town of Oso, about 55 miles (90 km) northeast of Seattle last Saturday, cascading over a river and a road into homes, blanketing about a square mile in muck and debris.
On Thursday Snohomish County Fire Chief Travis Hots said he expected the number of fatalities were expected to increase on Thursday (March 27).
“So what you’re going ot see in the next 24 to 48 hours, as the medical examiner’s office catches up with the difficult work they have to do, you’re going to see this number increase substantially,” Hots told reporters.
Emergency crews used dogs, small cameras and sophisticated listening devices to try and find buried bodies as other workers removed debris by hand.
President Barack Obama has signed an emergency declaration ordering U.S. government assistance to supplement state and local relief efforts. A local disaster relief account had nearly $50,000 in it on Thursday.
Authorities who whittled down a list of missing from about 176 people to 90 have said the victims could also include people from outside the community, such as construction workers or passing motorists.
The slide ranks among the worst in the United States. In 1969, 150 people were killed in landslides and floods in Virginia, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
More than 100 houses were destroyed by a slow-moving landslide in the Washington state town of Kelso in the late 1990s.