Oso landslide

[bleubird]

I put this in PD,even though there are science issues,because it is about who is responsible.County,state,Feds,or landowners?
Even with my old knowledge of soil mechanics I can see this as an avoidable tragedy.

Thoughts?

Can't get link to copy/paste. It's at USGS.gov

 

[Bronzeage]

One could argue this is a weather related disaster, since it depends upon the amount of rain. Like most weather related disasters, it's really a matter of development in a hazardous area. Not much different than building in a flood or quake zone.

 

[bleubird]

I agree,but that valley had a long history of sides and logging.A study in 1999 warned about the danger,but the county let people build there anyway.

 

[travc]

I remember going on a field trip as an undergrad, riding along with a geologist. As we drove through SoCal, he kept pointing out all the active landsides with houses above or below which would, evenutally, be destroyed.

Yeah, it is an avoidable disaster. In fact, I'm really surprised that insurance doesn't already disincentivize any new (or rebuild) construction in landslide (or avalance) zones.

As for who is responsible for cleanup, it depends. I most places it tends to be the county, since these sorts of places are normally outside of cities/towns proper. For emergency response, it is all-hand-on-deck, so all levels have good reason to discourage people from living in such places.

It is difficult to require people to move who are already living someplace. New construction should be banned, and rebuilds should be highly discouraged. It probably makes sense both from a public safety and a fiscal POV to pay people to move (at least for rebuilds).

PS: One of the places I did a bit of field work is in the middle of the Colorado Rockies north of Crested Butte. They had maps posted up of the avalance danger assessments, and also had abondoned (partially demolished) some buildings which were in higher risk zones. All their new buildings were sited in lower risk areas. Mind you, this is a place where access during the winter tends to require cross-country skiing several miles.

 

[Bronzeage]

I agree,but that valley had a long history of sides and logging.A study in 1999 warned about the danger,but the county let people build there anyway.

It's difficult to write a law which protects all people from all things. The usual mechanism for this kind of thing is insurance companies and mortgage banks. An insurance company is much better at assessing risk than a county building commission. A mortgage bank will go along with the insurance company. If a property can't be insured, no one will lend money for building. It might be difficult to find a loan just to buy the undeveloped land.

What a person does on their own property, with their own money is usually their private matter.

Then again, what happens when someone else's development endangers someone down hill? Most states will not allow me to build a damn and create a lake upstream from a homes. If my building destabilizes the mountain side, I risk everyone below me. Suddenly, we have a situation involving multiple property owners and it's back in the hands of the government again.

 

[lpetrich]

Skepticblog » Oso tragic, Oso foolish -- I love that title.

In fact, the warnings of the state were not only ignored, but actually defied. For in a strange twist, the law inspired some people to fight the state’s efforts to “meddle in the private affairs of residents”. As the news of the slide came out, it turned out that one of the main activists protesting the 2006 zoning law to prevent runaway building in hazardous areas was Thomas Satterlee.[/quote]
He was a big supporter of the "Sovereign Citizen" movement of declaring oneself independent of the Federal and state governments, and he also wanted the Oso region to be likewise independent.

In the case of Oso, Washington, Satterlee was particularly active in fighting the 2006 zoning law, whose primary intent was to prevent excessive building in the region, especially in hazardous zones below the landslide. His acts of defiance influenced his neighbors, who also ignored the law and the warnings of expert geologists. Instead, they chose to live in a clearly identifiable area of great hazard. Some of the victims of the slide, who knew about the risks and openly ignored expert advice, are no “innocents” who had no warning. Those who never heard of the risk, however, bear no blame for staying in a danger zone. In another ironic twist, Satterlee apparently paid the ultimate price for his defiance of experts: he and his family are among the missing and presumed dead.

Thus the past tense. Seems like those big government nannies were right.

But this raises a larger issue of risk management. Should the government have the right to protect people from their own stupidity, and force them out of harm’s reach since they refuse to listen to evidence? In the case of some kinds of clearly identifiable immediate danger, there is no question that it should.

He then discussed the Federal Government's "red zone" around Mt. St. Helens early in 1980. Some people refused to move out of that zone, like Harry Truman, who entertained reporters with his defiance. They all paid with their lives when that volcano had that big eruption back then.

But there are other natural hazards that are not as obvious or scary as a volcano—but just as deadly.

He mentioned

• Landslides
• Floods
• Wildfires
• Earthquakes
• Storm waves and tsunamis

As Jon Schwartz wrote in the New York Times, most of the time the state has great difficulty in regulating this problem because of the backlash of people who refuse to listen to geologists, refuse to use common sense, and don’t want to be told what’s unsafe:

But things are rarely simple when government power meets property rights. The government has broad authority to regulate safety in decisions about where and how to build, but it can count on trouble when it tries to restrict the right to build. ... A prominent libertarian legal thinker, Richard A. Epstein of the University of Chicago Law School, said that the case of Oso should be simple, however, because of its history of landslides. “The case is a no-brainer in favor of extensive government regulation in order to protect against imminent perils to life and health,” he said. “I’m a property guy, but I’m not a madman.”

An alternative would be to finance assistance to natural-disaster victims on the condition that they move away from vulnerable areas or otherwise make themselves disaster-resistant.

There have been success stories. After the town of Valmeyer, Illinois, was obliterated by one of the many recent Mississippi River floods, the survivors chose to rebuild the town on the bluff above the floodplain. Yet as Jon Schwartz points out:

The attraction of risky places can be strong; they can be as beautiful as they are deadly. Nicholas Pinter, a professor of geology at Southern Illinois University, said that he took his students to see the site of the former town of Valmeyer. As they drove along the rich flood plain, he recalled, “all my students could think of was that this would be a really good place to live.”

So we ought to see more Valmeyers.

 

[travc]

There was a big landslide in SoCal (just north-west of LA) while I was living down there. I can't recall the name of the town, but it was situated at the foot of a known active landslide and the county had been trying to convince people to move for decades. After the slide, there was a lot of talk about the county declaring that they wouldn't help/save anyone who rebuilt in that area when the next slide happened... Of course, many people ignored them and the county emergency services will risk their lives when the next slide happens to save those idiots.

 

[bleubird]

Property rights are one thing,but who pays for the rescue and clean-up?I am sad to see the children lost,they had no choice.

 

[bleubird]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-revealed-geologists-warned-dangers-1999.html