Deadly Alaska landslide displaces dozens of families in scenic Ketchikan

[August 27, 2024]  By Steve Gorman

(Reuters) -Emergency crews in the Alaska tourist hub of Ketchikan braced on Monday for more landslides after a large, rain-drenched slope gave way on Sunday, killing one person, injuring three others and leaving dozens of homes damaged and without power.

Photos from the aftermath of the slide showed a wide tract of a steep, thickly wooded hillside stripped of vegetation, and a tangle of twisted, broken pine trees and other debris that lay heaped against several buildings at the bottom of the slope.

Four or five homes were heavily damaged or destroyed, and about four dozen dwellings were placed under mandatory evacuation and left without electricity, according to Cynna Gubatayao, an emergency operations center official.

"In my 65 years in Ketchikan, I have never seen a slide of this magnitude," Mayor Dave Kiffer said in a statement posted online.

One man was confirmed killed, and three other people were injured, two of whom were hospitalized, according to a joint statement from the Ketchikan Gateway Borough and the city of Ketchikan.

Officials later identified the man who died as Sean Griffin, a senior maintenance technician for the city public works department who was clearing stormwater drains with another crew member when they were caught in the landslide. Griffin's age was not given.

No one was reported missing from the disaster.

Authorities said the area around the slide remained unstable, with a potential secondary landslide zone identified south of the original site and emergency response teams standing by.

A landslide remains after a large, rain-drenched slope gave way, killing one person, injuring three others and leaving dozens of homes damaged, under evacuation orders and without power, in a drone photograph in Ketchikan, Alaska, U.S. August 26, 2024. Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities/Handout via Reuters

Gubatayao told Reuters by phone that Sunday's slide, which occurred at about 4 p.m., followed a day of heavy downpours. Forecasts called for showers to continue across the region through Monday.

Ketchikan, the sixth most populous city in Alaska with some 8,000 residents, lies at the southern tip of the coastal channel known as the Inside Passage connecting the Gulf of Alaska to Puget Sound in Washington state.

The town is surrounded by the Tongass National Forest, one of the world's last remaining intact temperate rain forests.

A hub of tourism and commercial fishing in Alaska's scenic southeastern panhandle, Ketchikan is known as the gateway to the Misty Fiords National Monument, one of the area's major outdoor attractions.

The slide came less than three weeks after more than 100 homes in Alaska's capital Juneau, about 235 miles (378 km) to the northwest, were damaged by a burst of glacial flooding, an increasingly frequent phenomenon exacerbated by climate change.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Sandra Maler and Lincoln Feast)

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