Background
At 10:37 a.m. on Saturday, March 22, 2014, 4 miles east of Oso, Washington, a ridge over 600 feet tall was set in motion by a mild earthquake, resulting in a two-stage collapse.Thirteen and a half million cubic yards of liquified soil raced across the north fork of the Stillaguamish River, picking up additional water and traveling at speeds up to 35 mph, inundating and severing State Route 530. The slide cut off the town of Darrington while flooding, leveling, and burying the small Steelhead Haven neighborhood, killing 43 people, destroying dozens of homes, and devasting the broader community. Snohomish County first responders and residents, along with volunteers from across western Washington, worked in close cooperation for long days in difficult conditions searching for the missing. They combed through millions of cubic yards of mud over the entire area of the slide to locate those whose lives were ended so tragically and unexpectedly. After four months of searching, the last remains of all 43 lost souls were found and finally recovered on the anniversary of the disaster.
Hear from witnesses, survivors, and first responders in this special coverage from The Everett (WA) Herald, https://bit.ly/oso-everett-herald. As so often happens, the strength of a close-knit community and its commitment to its fellow citizens is never so obvious as it is in their efforts to rescue those that survived, to recover those that were lost, and to support the survivors who lost family, friends, and homes. The tragedy has brought into focus the community’s commitment to one another and bound them together as they worked to heal and to restore some small portion of what was lost.
Building The Memorial
Memorializing those who were lost is an important step in community healing, and the Guild was honored to build two locally-designed timber frame portals as part of the building workshop in the fall of 2020, the Guild gathered at the Evergreen State Fairgrounds in Monroe and welcomed volunteers for the Oso workshop. With volunteers coming from as close as Seattle and as far away as West Virginia,
The workshop consisted of cutting the east and west portals to Oso Memorial Park along the Whitehorse Trail. The design, which included rough-sawn Douglas fir timbers as large as 10x18, turned out to be a satisfying challenge for our fifteen volunteers. Originally intended to be mill rule, the lead team instead used square rule as well as scribing to lay out the timbers due to the six-month hiatus caused by the pandemic shutdown. This change in approach enhanced the learning experience though it increased the fabrication time. Despite this change the volunteers and lead team managed to complete the workshop a day earlier than expected.
Check out this flythrough of the workshop by Daniel Girard: https://bit.ly/oso-flythrough. Bill, Kieran, and Chris decided to assemble the trusses and walls and shipped them assembled. This allowed the participants to lift them directly off the trailers and install them immediately. This measure simplified the raising and reduced the time on-site which, given the waves of rain on raising day, proved to be the right thing to do. The morning raising of the west portal tested the commitment and mettle of the participants, who were rewarded with a drier afternoon which ended with the sun making a cameo appearance just as they completed the east portal.
Joining us for the raising were two special guests, Kevin Teague and Ron Thompson. Kevin was the original Snohomish County contact for this workshop, provided the initial concept for the portals, and is closely connected to the Oso community. Ron Thompson is a community member who lost family and friends in the mudslide; he and his immediate family just avoided being caught in the slide themselves, having left for town just 20 minutes before the tragedy took their home and everything they owned. Both were moved by the portals and the participants’ commitment to the work, and their gratitude reminds us of why we do this work.