Nile home was where landslide wanted to go
YAKIMA, Wash. - YAKIMA, Wash. (AP) — Steve Smith will never forget the sound.
Standing behind his house at the bottom of a steep slope, he heard muffled thunder and cracking in the hillside.
About 11 a.m. that Saturday morning, he returned from teaching a volunteer firefighter class at the Nile-Cliffdell Fire Department station near Squaw Rock, about five miles away.
He found rock, ranging in size from a fist to a medicine ball, piling up near his wine-making shop at the west end of the 5-acre property where he and his wife, Mary, have lived for 17 years.
"I think we are in trouble," he recalls saying to himself.
Before noon the next day their mobile home, shop and outdoor storage shed were gone, lost under tons of rock and earth in the biggest landslide to strike in Yakima County in thousands of years.
It was, Steve recalls, like watching lava flow.
Earth kept moving slowly that morning of Oct. 11, eventually blocking the highway and damming the Naches River. Rock first blocked the westbound lane of State Route 410 about 6 a.m.
A Washington State Patrol trooper who responded to a 911 call described what he saw when he arrived shortly after 8 a.m. that Sunday.
"It kind of moved slowly," recalls trooper Todd Haddorff, 42, assigned to the patrol's Yakima detachment since 2006. "It was awesome and real scary at the same time."
By then, Steve, assistant Nile-Cliffdell fire chief and a paramedic, had ordered the road closed, and three State Patrol cars were blocking the highway east of the slide to keep people away.
Haddorff says the Smiths' mobile home was still standing when he arrived.
Mary had already left the Nile, driving to Naches to be with family. Steve stayed behind for as long as he could, trying to keep an eye on the home while helping others nearby. Soon, state troopers were calling on their radios, ordering him to get away from the area.
The long, slow slide of the mountain continued. By 11 a.m., the house was gone.
Since the slide four weeks ago, all they've been able to find is the roof of their carport, wood and galvanized tin, crumpled near what was the shore of the Naches River.
The couple is staying in a summer home nearby. The owner has offered to let them stay there through the spring, but they will soon have to make some decisions about their future.
"It's depressing," Steve, 54, says. "You have such an emotional attachment to buildings and the home you worked years to build up. It's like losing a loved one.
"It's like the home had a pulse, a living thing you lost."
The couple learned within days that their homeowners insurance doesn't cover landslides, according to an initial review by their insurance company, Mutual of Enumclaw (Wash).
"I had no idea we needed slide insurance," Steve says, offering cautionary advice to others in the Nile. "I don't want this to happen to anyone else. You think you are insured. You may not be."
On Friday, he and his wife were notified that they and eight other homeowners who lost their residences would not qualify for government assistance under the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) program.
The Smiths were able to save their pets, some important papers, some firearms, their wedding photo album as well as the "Star Trek" Christmas tree ornaments Mary had given her husband each year since they began dating.
But keepsakes like other photo albums and his grandmother's paintings that hung on the walls are gone. Most of their possessions are gone.
Mary, 49, a member of the Simmons family that owns the gravel pit and property around it, says keeping busy helps.
"You go through highs and lows. The first week was really the worst. We didn't eat or sleep for three days. We had no appetite," she says.
She works part time at the Yakima Bindery. Steve works part time at Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital, stages training classes for local fire departments, and is an instructor in pediatric life support for Children's Hospital in Seattle.
Neighbors and co-workers, in addition to Nile firefighters and county Emergency Medical Services members, have given the couple emotional and some financial support.
St. John's Catholic Church in Naches, where Steve is the music director, organized a bazaar Saturday to raise money for them.
"You don't realize what community means until something like this happens," Mary says.
For months, the couple had noticed rocks falling on their driveway. At times, Steve had to use a front-loader to move rocks that were narrowing their driveway.
When the rock began falling with greater intensity on the morning of Oct. 10, he called family members and the Upper Valley emergency dispatch center. The center notified the Washington state Department of Transportation, the sheriff's office and the Washington State Patrol.
The group gathered at the Smiths' home and looked at the hillside.
Meagan McFadden, DOT spokeswoman in Union Gap, said the agency's primary focus was the potential effect on the highway.
"There was no immediate threat to the road. Everything was contained around Steve's house," McFadden says.
Steve told the group he would be at home and would notify them if anything else happened.
Then, about 4 p.m. Saturday, all the movement stopped.
"I guess we were complacent. We thought it had relieved itself," he says now.
The Smiths made dinner, settled in to watch a football game. He even built a small fire during the evening.
But as bedtime approached, the couple decided to err on the side of caution. They slept in their fifth-wheel trailer they had moved earlier in the day to the edge of their property and settled in for the night.
It would be a short night. Both recall being awakened about 2 a.m. by more rocks falling on the mobile home.
By 4 a.m., Steve was up and out.
"I could tell it was getting worse," he says. "It was beginning to tear up the shop and moving faster than it was on Saturday."
Within an hour, he had placed flares on the highway to block the road.
Meanwhile, the Simmons family was moving equipment out of the pit area, south and east of their home.
Walking back up toward the house, Steve says he saw the hill had pushed the mobile home off its foundation.
He says he thought about trying to get more personal possessions out of the home, but the doors were jammed. Odd thoughts enter one's mind at a time like that, he recalls.
"I didn't want to break a window in a home," he says.
The attachment to that place remains strong for the Smiths. Mary enjoyed living on the property as a girl growing up in her parents' nearby home and the mobile home her father helped her place on the property prior to her marriage to Steve.
"We are starting over after 22 years of living there," she says, nodding toward the pile of rubble that entombs their home.
They would like to remain in the Nile and want eventually to look for property. It is a way to begin looking forward.
"I'm a spiritual person. My faith is getting me through it," Steve says. "I'm angry. But I know we will be fine."
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Information from: Yakima Herald-Republic, http://www.yakima-herald.com
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