Three people were killed and three were missing on Monday after a landslide barreled down a heavily forested, rain-soaked mountainside and smashed into homes in a remote fishing community in southeast Alaska.
The slide — estimated to be 137m wide — occurred at about 9pm during a storm near Wrangell, an island community of 2,000 people about 250km south of the state capital, Juneau.
Rescue crews found the body of a girl in an initial search and late on Tuesday the bodies of two adults were found by a drone operator.
Photo: AP
Searchers used a cadaver-sniffing dog and heat-sensing drones to search for two children and one adult unaccounted for after the disaster, while US Coast Guard ships and other vessels looked along a waterfront littered with rocks, trees and mud.
Alaska State Troopers spokesman Austin McDaniel said that a woman who had been on the upper floor of a home was rescued.
She was in good condition and was receiving medical care, McDaniel said.
One of the three homes that was struck was unoccupied, he said.
“Our community is resilient and it always comes together for tragedies like this,” Wrangell interim borough manager Mason Villarma told reporters in a telephone interview. “We’re broken, but resilient and determined to find everybody that’s missing.”
Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy issued a disaster declaration for Wrangell, saying that he and his wife were heartbroken and praying for all those affected.
The landslide left a scar of barren earth from near the top of the mountain down to the ocean. A wide swath of evergreen trees were ripped out of the ground and a highway was buried by debris, cutting off access and power to about 75 homes.
Troopers said a large-scale search and rescue mission was not initially possible because the site was unstable and hazardous.
A geologist was flown in from Juneau and conducted a preliminary assessment.
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