President Obama signs emergency declaration for Washington State to help mudslide victims

Good news. This just in from the White House:

Today, the Pres­i­dent declared an emer­gency in the State of Wash­ing­ton and ordered fed­er­al aid to sup­ple­ment state and local response efforts due to the emer­gency con­di­tions result­ing from flood­ing and mud­slides begin­ning on March 22, 2014, and continuing.

The Pres­i­den­t’s action autho­rizes the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (FEMA), to coor­di­nate all dis­as­ter relief efforts which have the pur­pose of alle­vi­at­ing the hard­ship and suf­fer­ing caused by the emer­gency on the local pop­u­la­tion, and to pro­vide appro­pri­ate assis­tance for required emer­gency mea­sures, autho­rized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives and to pro­tect prop­er­ty and pub­lic health and safe­ty, and to lessen or avert the threat of a cat­a­stro­phe in Sno­homish County.

Specif­i­cal­ly, FEMA is autho­rized to iden­ti­fy, mobi­lize, and pro­vide at its dis­cre­tion, equip­ment and resources nec­es­sary to alle­vi­ate the impacts of the emer­gency.  Emer­gency pro­tec­tive mea­sures, lim­it­ed to direct fed­er­al assis­tance, will be pro­vid­ed at 75 per­cent fed­er­al funding.

W. Craig Fugate, Admin­is­tra­tor, Fed­er­al Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency (FEMA), Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, named Michael J. Hall as the Fed­er­al Coor­di­nat­ing Offi­cer for fed­er­al recov­ery oper­a­tions in the affect­ed area.

The Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion’s prompt autho­riza­tion of fed­er­al assis­tance is great­ly appre­ci­at­ed. The Stil­laguamish Riv­er remains most­ly dammed by the mas­sive mud­slide that wiped out entire neigh­bor­hoods near Oso and buried a mile-long stretch of State Route 530 between Dar­ring­ton and Arling­ton in muck.

The death toll now stands at four­teen and over one hun­dred peo­ple are still list­ed as miss­ing. Hope­ful­ly those still miss­ing can still be account­ed for.

Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee issued a state­ment a lit­tle bit ago respect­ful­ly ask­ing the news media to give fam­i­lies affect­ed by the mud­slide some privacy:

This is an extreme­ly dif­fi­cult and emo­tion­al time for the fam­i­lies and friends of those impact­ed by the Oso mudslide.

Fam­i­ly mem­bers are griev­ing, try­ing to focus on find­ing miss­ing loved ones or work­ing through the process of rebuild­ing what was lost.

I under­stand the news media plays an impor­tant role in trag­ic events like this and in this instance has worked long hours to help warn the pub­lic of dan­gers and pub­li­cize where peo­ple can turn for help.

But some fam­i­lies have asked us to ask the media to be respect­ful of their pri­va­cy and their grief. This is espe­cial­ly true for dis­placed fam­i­lies in local shel­ters. I want to rein­force local offi­cials’ request that the media allow those shel­ters to be a zone of pri­va­cy while reporters con­tin­ue to do their vital job. Thank you.

Kudos to the gov­er­nor for speak­ing out on behalf of the affect­ed fam­i­lies, many of whom lost their homes and their belong­ings (and like­ly their prop­er­ty as well). They are not the stars of a dis­as­ter real­i­ty show, and they should­n’t be made to feel like they are. They’re the vic­tims of a geo­log­ic haz­ard that struck with­out warn­ing, wip­ing out a rur­al Sno­homish Coun­ty com­mu­ni­ty along­side the Stillaguamish.