Tag Archives: disaster

WHAT WERE THE CHILDREN DOING?

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WHAT WERE THE CHILDREN DOING?

During most disasters children are secluded from the harsh realities as well as possible.

On March 22, 2014, 10:47 a.m., the Highway 530 Mudslide swallowed the tiny community of Hazel.

Shortly after the slide hit, those people living EAST of the slide responded.

During the grueling day as hope flared then dwindled, the people from the small town of Darrington and the surrounding area east of the mudslide, labored to rescue those trapped.

What were the children doing?

Whatever was needed! Our young people immediately responded to the disaster.

Some joined the adults on the debris field, rescuing survivors.

Some worked at the Community Center preparing a hot meal for those slogging through the mud slurry and for the stunned and devastated city of Darrington and the surrounding area.

The next day and for many days thereafter, our youth continued their heroic efforts:

They packed lunches, sometimes hundreds of lunches

Helped prepare meals and then helped to serve them

Wrapped utensils to be used during meals

Worked on the debris field

Did welfare checks on older citizens

Cleaned houses for volunteers and displaced families to stay in

Unloaded trucks of donations

Shelved those donations

Delivered food and other necessities to families

Swept floors

Helped affected families move into temporary homes

Raised money and donated it to the victims

Washed fire trucks

Helped with animal care and animal food distribution

Wrote and performed a song of hope and strength for the people of Darrington

Drummed and “laid a blanket” ( a Native American ceremony performed by the Sauk-Suiattle People) for donations for the affected families

Did whatever was asked of them without complaint

How do I know this? I was the Darrington Volunteer Registrar during the disaster. Some of our youth worked as many as 15 hours a day, day-after-day. In the end, our young people donated over 3,000 hours of effort. And these are only the youth I know about! Many others worked but never registered with me.

Are we proud of our youth?

You betcha!

Our young people, ranging in age from Cub Scouts to seniors in high school, ARE the

DARRINGTON DO-ERS!

Thanks to all of them the recovery efforts were supported. Tired and disheartened and grief-stricken people received food, shelter, and other types of assistance as well as a renewal of hope.

These young people rock!

Do you have a story of young people who rock? Would love to hear it! Leave a comment!

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CAN DARRINGTON SURVIVE?

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During the disastrous Darrington-Oso Mudslide disaster relief professionals learned important lessons from the Darrington volunteers.  Greg Sieloft was one such official. Follow the link and read how one small town’s response to the biggest disaster to hit the state of Washington, changed a man.

http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20140413/NEWS01/140419725/6-days-in-disaster-zoneOso_landslide_(WSP)

Explanation of photo: The chopped hillside to the right of the photo is the 900 foot hillside from which the slide occurred. The hillside broke like some giant cleaver had severed part of it and created that sheered face.

The water in the foreground is the Stillaguamish River and as you can see, it is blocked and backed up from the slide across it.

In the background and to the left in the photo is a squiggly gray line that leads back into the slide–that is Highway 530, the major route into and out of Darrington. We are still not sure how much of the one and a half mile of highway still exists beneath the mud.

With the blockage of Highway 530, Darrington faces severe economic hardships. The Hampton Mill that employs upwards of three hundred workers struggles to survive the increased costs for bringing in raw material and sending out their finished products. Increased fuel costs drive local families to despair as the long roundabout route that must now be traversed to go to work and to take children to school, breaks strained budgets. Tourist revenue, always an important part of Darrington’s economy with everything from the famous Bluegrass Festival to smaller festivals and musicians and artists, has been completely halted. Without Highway 530 open, tourists will not be stopping in this small town on their way along the scenic Cascade Loop and on to Eastern Washington. Where last summer thousands of happy tourists drove through, stopped, ate, rested, and bought from Darrington artists and merchants this summer promises to be one silence and isolation.  Highway 530 is not expected to be open even to local traffic for upwards of three months.

Can this small town survive? Only time will tell.

Photo courtesy of WSP.

BOOMER, NEW INFORMATION

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Several hours after learning about Boomer, it is now understood that Boomer DID NOT survive the landslide, but rather walked two to three miles from his current home to the devastated area. Why?  Why would a dog walk that far to some awful place? Boomer’s former owner lived, and died, at that site. Boomer’s former owner, the brother of Boomer’s current owner, lived in a home wiped out by the mudslide. So, last night Boomer returned to the area where he had once been loved; an area that claimed the life of his first human.

No, the miracle we thought had happened, didn’t happen. A different miracle, a different testament of love happened. A dog crossed over two miles of extremely rough, dangerous terrain to the area where he once lived.

Dogs don’t forget; dogs grieve, and like the rest of us here in Darrington, maybe Boomer simply felt called to pay his respects to his former owner; felt called to “do something” in the face of such tragedy.

 

Last night, stumbling through the alien landscape of the #Oso mudslide devastation a horribly dehydrated and seriously injured dog was found. The dog who is slightly larger and a bit heavier-bodied than a German Shepherd was named Lucky because the animal rescue workers believed he had survived the worse disaster in Washington State history–a #disaster rivaling the explosion of Mount Saint Helens.  He was transported to the Darrington Rodeo/Bluegrass Grounds to our Animal Rescue Site to rest and be assessed overnight.

0403boomer-dog

This morning, two Darrington Volunteers, Hiliary Schultz and Carolyn Yost transported Lucky to the Arlington Animal Clinic after pain killers had been administered to make the rough trip bearable for the seriously injured dog. The temporary, disaster route is a potholed, rough graveled, one-lane roadway. It bounced their vehicle as the tires crunched the gravel up and down the mountainside behind and adjacent to the swamps and mud of the devastated area where excavators diligently dug and crews watched for the uncovering of human remains. They delivered Boomer to Arlington Animal Clinic.

For a few hours, we believed Boomer had survived a disaster that had claimed the lives of our friends, family and neighbors. For a few hours we rejoiced. A cheer rang through the firehouse as we crowded around the brand new laptop that had just been donated to our disaster relief efforts yesterday by Microsoft. As the story about Boomer came on screen, a cheer rang off the walls of that cavernous building. Volunteers and fire department personnel threw arms around each other laughing and cheering.

When Trudy LaDouceur, District Secretary of Darrington Fire District #24 said, “This is so great. I am so sick of death,” she spoke for all of us.

Amidst sorrow and loss; pain and grief, for a few hours we believed that a miracle occurred last night: Boomer walked out of the deadly Oso Mudslide, and brought hope and healing to the hearts of Darrington’s people.

Tonight, we know that didn’t happen. A little bit of our hope slid away, a slippery dark eel sliding into the muddy swamps of that alien landscape that swallowed the lives of those we loved.

http://www.king5.com/community/blogs/the-pet-dish/Boomer-the-dog-found-Oso-slide-253832561.html

Here is the updated report on Boomer, the dog who “felt called” to traverse the deadly landscape where once a person he loved had lived. We here in Darrington understand that feeling; it is the “call” that takes our volunteers to that debris field, day after day.

http://www.king5.com/community/blogs/the-pet-dish/Boomer-the-dog-found-Oso-slide-253832561.html