Search and rescue efforts have been put on edge in Ketchikan, Alaska as one was drowned, three were injured and many houses were buried and without power after a deadly landslide hit the tourist city on Sunday. It resulted we have another problem of landslides that occurred after the heavy rain which made it vulnerable to sliding again shortly.
Pictures of the scene show the area after the slide, the part of a steep forested slope cleared of vegetation debris and forest trees cluttered haphazardly against structures at the base of the slide. Many have lost their homes as some were severely damaged or totally wrecked The affected houses have been estimated to be about 50 of them have been vacated and without electricity supply as spoken by Cynna Gubatayao an employee at the emergency operations center.
The Mayor of Ketchikan Dave Kiffer couldn’t believe his eyes while addressing the disaster and his reaction couldn’t be more typical: “I have been living in Ketchikan for the past 65 years and I have never witnessed a slide that is as massive as this one. ”
The who perished in the slide was later established to be Sean Griffin a senior maintenance technician of the city for the public works department. Griffin was working together with another officer to remove debris that had accumulated on several stormwater drains when they were buried in the disaster. Three others were injured one of them serious enough to require a hospitalization. Luckily, no other person was reported missing in the camp or other nearby areas affected by the disaster.
It has been ascertained that there is a new location that can experience landslides and therefore emergency services are on alert. The slide happened at 4 p.m. on Sunday with incessant rainfall experienced the previous day as well as on Monday.
Ketchikan has a population of approximately 8000 people and is situated in the southern part of Alaska’s Inside Passage with the majority of the town as well as the city’s outskirts bordered by the Tongass National Forest which is one of the only remaining intact temperate rainforests in the world. The area of the zone is important for tourism and fishing and the destination is famous for its connection to the Misty Fiords National Monument.
This sad occurrence follows another calamity almost three weeks in Alaska’s capital city Juneau where more than a hundred homes were swept away by floods occasioned by glaciers – a situation attributed to climate change.