Search for Oso mudslide victims officially called off with two still missing

The active search for victims in the Oso mudslide has now officially come to an end with two still missing in the debris, Snohomish County officials announced Monday.

Snohomish County Sheriff Ty Trenary says small scale searches will continue in the area, but the operation is shifting as work continues to remove debris from the March 22 landslide and clear and reopen Highway 530.

“We’re at a point where we need more information,” Trenary says. “We need the water to go away. In some cases we need mother nature to give us a break. But we’re not giving up on the two remaining people that are still missing.”

Forty-one victims have been recovered since the slide. The two who remain missing are 44-year-old Kris Regelbrugge, whose husband’s body already has been recovered, and 53-year-old Steven Hadaway who had been installing a satellite TV dish at a home.

“This has been a difficult decision because I know that Kris and Steve’s families are looking for closure,” Trenary says.

Trenary says about 30 people will remain in the field. Up to 1,000 people per day were searching at the peak of the effort.

Snohomish County Executive John Lovick says the county is now working with state officials to form a joint commission to conduct an independent review on all aspects of the slide and the response to the disaster.

“There will be a lot of questions and we hope to have a lot of answers,” Lovick says.

The top priority now is getting Highway 530 reopened as soon as possible, says Snohomish County Executive Director Gary Haakenson.

“Our priority is working with WSDOT (Washington State Department of Transportation) and we expect to turn over the highway and access road soon,” he says.

The county has established a long-term disaster recovery center in Darrington to provide a “one-stop shop” for residents who need the county’s help in any way, Haakenson says. Another office is being planned for Arlington as well.

“Our goal is to do our best to bring normalcy back to the valley in a timely manner knowing full well that for many families normalcy will never return,” he says.

Experts monitoring the slide say it continues to slough, but the additional sliding is expected.

“We have instrumentation in the middle of the slide, on top of the slide and around the perimeters of the edge and we continue to monitor them on a daily basis,” says Steve Thompson, Snohomish County Public Works Director.

Thompson says conditions remain extremely difficult for crews working in the debris field, with massive amounts of water making recovery and cleanup challenging. Crews continue working to drain a huge pond that formed behind the debris, and have opened a channel to encourage the Stillaguamish River to flow near where it previously formed.

Thompson says with the river so dramatically altered, scientists have begun looking at models in anticipation of increased flood risk upstream ahead of the fall flooding season.

“Everything has changed and is changing as we speak,” he says.