An Oregon Department of Transportation drone photo shows the massive slide early Friday that wiped out a portion of Highway 229 between the communities of Siletz and Kernville and continued into the Siletz River.
By Lincoln Chronicle staff
SILETZ – A massive landslide early Friday wiped out a section of Highway 229 between Siletz and Kernville, damaging homes and sending mud and trees into the Siletz River.
Oregon Department of Transportation spokeswoman Mindy McCartt said the slide was reported at 3:30 a.m. between mileposts 14 and 15 about 10 miles north of the town of Siletz and was still moving as of 11 a.m.
McCartt said ODOT crews have been monitoring the area because of the heavy rains this week.
“We’ve been out there all week dealing with high water on that highway and some sunken grades,” McCartt said. “We’ve had two different locations of sunken grade where it shifts and the highway is cracked. Yesterday at about milepost nine, we did a patch over a big sunken grade or crack in the road.”
The agency is flying a drone over the area to assess the extent of the damage but McCartt said the road has been taken out and will be closed indefinitely. The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office said the landslide took out a two-tenths of a mile section of the highway.
The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office said the landslide 10 miles north of Siletz early Friday damaged at least three homes but that no one was injured. (Oregon Department of Transportation photo)The sheriff’s office said the landside area includes up to five residential properties, including substantial impact to at least three homes but said all known occupants in the area have been accounted for and evacuated. Two of the evacuated residents were connected to the American Red Cross for services.
The slide, including earth and structural debris and possibly vehicle debris went into the Siletz River, the sheriff’s office said. The slide originally occurred on property owned by Weyerhaeuser above Highway 229 and continued down to the properties below the highway and into the river. Weyerhauser representatives have been notified and are evaluating their property, the sheriff’s office said.
An aerial photo from the Oregon Department of Transportation shows the top of the hill above the Siletz River where Friday morning’s landside began before hitting residential properties below and ending up in the river.Lincoln County said its emergency operations center was activated to assist in response to the slide and that state agencies were notified regarding the possible impacts to the Siletz River.
The Siletz Valley Fire District was at the scene early Friday morning but said there was not much they could do because the slide was blocking the road.
“There were two people who were home at the time,” said Siletz fire’s deputy chief Daniel Morford. “They have been safely evacuated from their house. The rest of the residences, from my understanding, were vacation homes and none of the residents were home. So from my understanding all individuals have been accounted for.”
That section of the highway is the link between the community of Siletz and rural areas around it to Gleneden Beach and Lincoln City to the north. Area residents now will have to backtrack into Siletz, go west on Highway 20 and then north on U.S. Highway 101.
To see an ODOT drone video of the slide area go here
The Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office said the landslide 10 miles north of Siletz early Friday damaged at least three homes but that no one was injured. (Oregon Department of Transportation photo)
If you look at this area in Google Earth today, the aerial imagery is from 2024, and you can clearly see a couple bands of tan color near the top of the hill, which looks to me (some geotechnical engineering background but not licensed) like the telltale color of exposed soil just above a slide that was already in progress back then.
Here’s a view similar to the third photograph in the article (and again, it currently shows 2024):
https://earth.google.com/web/@44.80832028,-123.96592439,21.42179253a,464.96994637d,35y,49.32422449h,79.61445525t,0r/data=CgRCAggBQgIIAEoNCP___________wEQAA?utm_source=earth7&utm_campaign=vine&hl=en
You would need Google Earth Pro (desktop app) to see historical imagery, but from what I can see, the tan parts aren’t there in December 2018, and then they appear in July 2019, so the first, smaller slide (or you could say the first part of this slide) probably happened in late winter/spring in early 2019. Unsurprisingly, the slide starts in a clearcut. The hill appears to have been clearcut sometime in 2011. So if your house was buried or you almost died, you should talk to a lawyer and think about suing Weyerhaeuser or at least pressuring them to settle out of court.
Wow, that whole mountain will come down if it keeps raining.
Thank you, Glenn! Wow, you can see the landslide happening in ultra-slow time with the Google Earth feature. Those 3 slumps show up loud and clear! Shades of Oso, Washington, 2014, where there was a massive slide that killed 43 people and wiped out a town.
https://www.usgs.gov/news/featured-story/revisiting-oso-landslide
Weyerhauser’s logging was cited as a contributing factor in that slide, too, and was sued. After the preventable Oso tragedy, Washington forestry officials updated state guidelines for evaluating unstable slopes that, if logged, could contribute to landslides.
With the current administration, Oregon may not be able to curtail logging in unstable areas, as controls on logging are being loosened instead of tightened.
My heart goes out to the people affected by the Siletz slide. That’s a long drive to Lincoln City now. More homes might be affected and need to be evacuated because of the risk of future sliding. I hope the people who lived there will find a place to be this Christmas. God bless you.