This photo, taken in the wee hours of Friday morning, July 18, 2014, depicts the ferocity of the Carlton Complex Fire as it blazed through the area south of the Loup. It is only a matter of time until that fire takes a No. 2 spot to the next big natural disaster.
By Mike Maltais
Washington state makes much of its diverse climate zones when pitching the appeal of the Evergreen State as a tourist destination. But another possible point of interest for the more adventure-minded might be the state’s checklist of notable natural disasters.
At their most destructive, wind and water, fire and ice have all left their mark across the state to such an extent that Washington ranks “among the nation’s leaders in Presidentially declared weather-related disasters,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Last July’s Carlton Complex Fire, the largest in the state’s history at 256,000 acres and 370 square miles, is just the latest on a list of record-setting state cataclysms that have changed lives and landscapes. It’s not often that two events of record-book proportions occur in the same state in the same year, but such was the case in Washington in 1910 and again in 2014.
Mudslide to remember
Just four months prior to the Carlton Complex Fire, on March 22, 2014, an estimated square mile of mud broke free from a hillside and obliterated a neighborhood along the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River at Oso. In terms of the 43 lives lost, not only was the Oso disaster — officially named the SR530 Slide after the nearby highway it damaged — the worst in state history, it was also the deadliest in U.S. history.
Geologists from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimate that the 8 million cubic meters of debris was enough to cover 600 football fields to a depth of 10 feet.
Snow takes a toll
An early 20th century avalanche in the high Cascade Mountains still ranks as the worst in both Washington state and the nation based upon the number of lives lost. On March 1, 1910, two Great Northern Railroad trains were stuck for days in snowdrifts at Wellington on the west side of Stevens Pass, and were swept 150 feet down the mountainside into the Tye River gorge by a wall of wet snow. The snow surrendered the last body four months later — 96 people died, 61 of them employed by Great Northern and 35 of them passengers.
Remnants of the concrete snow-sheds built by the railroad in the wake of the slides can still be seen on the pass. A nearly 8-mile tunnel that was bored through the mountains and opened in 1929 remains in use today.
Deadly wildfires
1910 was a banner year for Washington natural disasters. Six months after the Wellington avalanche, forest fires in eastern Washington and northern Idaho scorched 3 million acres of timber between August and September and in the process consumed 85 lives, 72 of those firefighters.
The Yacolt Burn, the name given to a series of fires in the Clark County area in 1902, covered nearly 239,000 acres and took 38 lives.
St. Helens awakes
The 20-plus megaton eruption of Mount St. Helens in Skamania County on May 5, 1980, was another Washington event that made the national record books. And St. Helens went to the head of the line as the most notorious of the state’s 10 volcanoes.
The lateral blast on the north face of St. Helens triggered the largest landslide in recorded history, sent 540 tons of ash into the atmosphere and left the 9,600-foot peak some 1,300 feet shorter. It took the lives of over 60 people and had the most destructive economic impact of any event of its kind in U.S. history.
Floodwaters rampage
The great Methow River flood, caused by spring snow melt in May and June of 1948, was the valley’s contribution to some of the worst flooding in state history. Floodwaters washed out all the bridges crossing the Methow, and in portions of eastern Washington, northern Idaho and on the Columbia River water levels reached record levels.
Near the mouth of the Columbia a railroad dike gave way and floodwaters so decimated the floodplain city of Vanport (named for Vancouver, Washington, and Portland, Oregon) site the largest post-war housing project of the day, that the town never recovered from the devastation. Today a park occupies the site where 16 people perished.
But both events pale in comparison to the ice-age flood that remains one of the largest in Earth’s history (sorry, Noah) and created Dry Falls, one of North America’s geological wonders, near Coulee City. Some 15,000 years ago an ice dam broke in western Montana and released a water flow 10 times that of all current rivers. The waters created the channeled scablands of central Washington and left behind the 400-foot-high, 3.5-mile-wide dry waterfall from which the area takes its name.
Tornadoes, too
One wouldn’t normally associate Washington state with tornadoes, but in 1972 Washington actually led the nation in the number of recorded deaths by tornado.
On April 5 of that year a twister, packing winds of 150-200 miles per hour, touched down in Vancouver, Washington, caused $50 million worth of damage and took six lives. Later that same day, another tornado struck near Spokane, and a third was recorded in rural Stevens County. According to the Fujita Scale (F-Scale) used to rank tornado severity, the Vancouver and Spokane twisters were classed as F3 events, mid-range on the F-Scale. The Fujita Scale or Fujita-Pearson Scale was developed by University of Chicago meteorologist Tetsuya Fujita, with help from Allen Pearson of NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma, and was introduced in 1971.
In May 1997, a state-record six tornadoes struck Washington in one day as part of a record 14 that were recorded in the state that year.
The big blow
The Columbus Day windstorm of October 12, 1962, has been labeled “the mother of all wind storms” and the strongest non-hurricane wind event of its kind to hit the continental United States in the 20th century. In the process of claiming nearly 50 lives, the big blow registered wind gusts to 150 mph in places and flattened some 15 million board feet of timber.
Heat and cold count
The great Methow freeze of 1968 wiped out most of the orchards in the valley when winter temperatures dipped below -50 degrees Fahrenheit.
However, the winter of 1949-50 is ranked as one of the worst statewide when heavy snows and freezing temperatures accounted for several dozen deaths, according to NOAA records. In the Puget Sound area, a January blizzard claimed 13 lives, and dumped over 20 inches of snow.
Until 2015, the period of 1976-77 comprised the worst recorded drought in the Pacific Northwest. Water and power use was restricted, ski resorts remained closed for much of their season, and crop yields suffered.
Owing to declining river levels, record temperatures, and historically low snowpack, this year is shaping up to be the worst drought in the nation’s most glaciated state. In mid-May, Gov. Jay Inslee declared a statewide drought emergency to address the needs of agriculture and wildlife.
“This drought is unlike any we’ve ever experienced,” according to sources at the Department of Ecology.
So, to those who yearn for the good ol’ days when fire, flood and famine seemed to unfold in epic proportions, don’t despair. The worst may yet be ahead.
