The Oso Landslide of 2014
Mike Pearson was a 52-year-old heavy-equipment operator who could coax a dozer up a 45-degree slope and still whistle “Sweet Caroline.” He lived in a cedar-sided house on Steelhead Drive, Oso, Washington, with his wife Jan—master pie baker—and their daughter Katie, 19, home from Everett Community College for spring break. Every March 22, Mike checked the hill behind the house—same hill that had slid in 2006, patched with promises and plastic sheeting. “She’s holdin’,” he’d say.
March 22, 2014, was Saturday. Rain—10 inches in two weeks—turned the Stillaguamish Valley to soup. At 10:37 a.m., the saturated slope let go. A square mile of hillside—30 million tons of mud, trees, and glacial till—liquefied and roared across Highway 530 at 60 mph. Mike was in the kitchen flipping pancakes. Jan screamed. Katie grabbed the dog, a golden retriever named Buddy. The house lifted, tumbled, and vanished under 60 feet of slurry.
The slide buried 49 homes. 43 people died. Mike, Jan, and Katie were in the “zone of death”—the heart of the scar. Buddy’s collar was found on a cedar stump three days later. Mike’s dozer keys washed up in Arlington, 14 miles downstream.
Searchers—volunteers, National Guard, cadaver dogs—worked 18-hour shifts in knee-deep mud. A logger found Katie’s phone—screen cracked, last text: “Love you Mom.” Jan’s pie server turned up in a blueberry bush. Mike’s hard hat, still yellow, was pulled from the river by a kayaker in June.
Oso rebuilt on higher ground. The highway reopened with a memorial—43 cedars, one for each life. Every March 22, survivors and families gather at the slide scar, now a quiet meadow of fireweed and alder. Katie’s college friends release 43 paper boats into the Stillaguamish. Mike’s old crew brings a dozer, parks it silent, and lays a single blueberry pie on the seat.
The hill still weeps groundwater. But the people stand taller.
#OsoLandslide

Quite a story. Thank You.

Thanks

sad story,,,,,,, Mike was quite the corrector......

Very sad story.