Officials announced on Friday that rescue teams in Alaska had stopped actively looking for victims of a landslide that occurred four days ago, sweeping tons of mud and debris down a rain-soaked mountain slope, killing at least three people and leaving three others missing.
According to Austin McDaniel, a state Public Safety Department spokesperson, search teams stopped working on Thursday after combing through the debris field that buried three houses and a coastal stretch of highway in the island fishing and logging town of Wrangell in southeast Alaska.
Above the Zimovia Highway, the densely forested mountainside gave way on Monday night as a storm pounded the area with strong winds and a lot of rain. Everything in its path was engulfed by the roaring cascade of mud and broken trees that swept over the shoreline at the base of the slope and across the highway.
A canine scent-detection team will be on standby in Wrangell to resume searching should fresh information indicate a particular area that required additional investigation, the Public Safety Department announced on Friday.
The three confirmed fatalities were identified by the agency as Timothy Heller, 44; Beth Heller, 36; and Mara, their 16-year-old daughter. Her parent’s remains were discovered the day after the slide, and the teen’s body was discovered right away.
Three people are still listed as missing and were thought to be dead, including two younger children, Derek and Kara Heller, who are eleven and twelve years old. Otto Florschutz, 65, whose wife Christina, 63, was discovered alive but hurt on Tuesday morning, was named as the third person reported missing.
The Florschutz couple lived on one side of the highway, and the Hellers’ house was situated between the highway’s edge and the shoreline. According to officials, the third house that was destroyed by the landslide had no occupants.
The borough of Wrangell is located on the northern tip of Wrangell Island in the Alaska Panhandle region, roughly 155 miles (250 km) sound of Juneau, the state capital. It was settled by Russians in the 19th century in an area that had been inhabited for centuries by the Native Tlingit people.