Washington Governor, Jay Inslee has proclaimed a state of emergency after a devastating mudslide occured in a rural part of Washington state, leaving eight people dead and about 100 others missing.
The governor, who described the scene as “a square mile of total devastation” after flying over the disaster area midday, assured families that everything was being done to find their missing loved ones.
Officials described the mudslide as “a big wall of mud and debris.” It blocked about a mile of State Route 530 near the town of Oso, about 55 miles north of Seattle. It was reported to be about 15 feet deep in some areas.
Authorities believe the slide was caused by ground made unstable by recent heavy rainfall.
The slide wiped through what neighbors described as a former fishing village of small homes — some nearly 100 years old.
The search for the missing ones is continuing even as authorities said some may have been able to get out on their own. The number unaccounted for could change because some people may have been in cars and on roads when the slide hit just before 11 a.m. Saturday, authorities said.
A 1-square-mile mudslide struck Saturday morning in Snohomish County, critically injuring several people and destroying about 30 several homes. Eight bodies have been pulled from the scene and authorities described the search for additional survivors to be “grim.”
John Pennington, emergency response managing director, said there are reports of up to 108 people missing in the mudslide but noted that number is unconfirmed.
“This is a large scale disaster event,” Pennington said, adding: “we have 108 individual names, or likeness … It’s a soft 108.
“It was Saturday and probably a higher number than what you would see on a week day,” he said of the victims during a press conference today. Pennington said it remains unclear how many structures were impacted at the time.
Crews were able to get to the muddy, tree-strewn area after geologists flew over in a helicopter and determined it was safe enough for emergency responders and technical rescue personnel to search for possible survivors, Snohomish County Fire District 21 Chief Travis Hots said Sunday evening.
“We didn’t see or hear any signs of life out there today,” he said, adding that they did not search the entire debris field, only drier areas safe to traverse. “It’s very disappointing to all emergency responders on scene.”
Hospital spokeswoman, Susan Gregg said two men, ages 37 and 58, were in serious condition, while a 25-year-old woman was upgraded to satisfactory condition.
Bruce Blacker, who lives just west of the slide, doesn’t know the whereabouts of six neighbors.
“It’s a very close knit community,” Blacker said as he waited at an Arlington roadblock before troopers let him through. There were almost 20 homes in the neighborhood that was destroyed, he said.
Search-and-rescue help came from around the region, including the Washington State Patrol and the Army Corps of Engineers. More than 100 were at the scene.
Evacuation shelters were set up at Post Middle School in Arlington and the Darrington Community Center.
Dane Williams, 30, who lives a few miles from the mudslide, spent Saturday night at a Red Cross shelter at the Arlington school.
He said he saw a few “pretty distraught” people at the shelter who didn’t know the fate of love.

President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria has called on the world, especially the advanced nations, to respect the right of countries to the peaceful use of nuclear energy for development purposes.

Other world leaders participating in the summit include President Xi Jinping of China, Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, President Francois Hollande of France, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, the President of South Korea, Ms. Park Geun-hye and the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Ban Ki Moon.

The FBI was reported to be pressing Malaysian investigators to interrogate Faizah, who is the estranged wife of Captain Zaharie Ahmad Shah who was the pilot of the Malaysian aircraft that disappeared into thin are about three weeks ago, with no fewer than 239 passengers aboard, including the crew members.
Faizah was said to have lived with Ahmad Shah in the same house along with their children, but the pair were said to be separated.
So far, local authorities have spoken with her, but have not pressed the issue of her husband’s frame of mind.
This is even as
investigators in Kuala Lumpur are said to be trying to ascertain the identity of a caller who spoke with the pilot on his mobile phone not long before the ill-fated plane took off.
The phone call, according to investigation, lasted for two minutes and was placed to Captain Ahmad Shah’s mobile phone from a cell phone with a pay-as-you-go SIM card. Authorities traced the card to a shop in Kuala Lumpur.
Investigators say that the ID provided for the purchase, as required by law, turned out to be bogus. All that is known is that the purchaser gave a woman’s name.
While the development raises the possibility of a terrorist connection, such clandestine methods are also habitually used by political opponents of the government who don’t want their conversations traced.
Meanwhile, The Times of London has reported that the plane’s cargo bay contained a consignment of phone and computer lithium-ion batteries. According to the newspaper, such batteries have been known on rare occasions to ignite on aircraft.
In 2010, a UPS cargo plane crashed in Dubai after the batteries caught fire. Another UPS plane had to make an emergency landing in Philadelphia in 2006 after a fire later traced to the batteries, according to the Times.
Production of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner aircraft was delayed due to problems with lithium batteries that caused electrical fires.
The batteries are not considered hazardous cargo, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization, Malaysian officials told the Times.
On Sunday, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said there was “increasing hope” of a breakthrough in the hunt for the plane on the strength of Chinese and Australian satellite images of possible large debris from the plane in the southern search area.
Flight MH370 vanished from civilian radar screens early on March 8, less than an hour after taking off from Kuala Lumpur on a scheduled flight to Beijing.
An international force resumed its search efforts on Sunday, zeroing in on two areas some 2,500 km (1,500 miles) southwest of Perth in an effort to find the object identified by China and other small debris, including a wooden pallet spotted by a search plane on Saturday.
“The weather in the southern Indian Ocean is much clearer today than the past couple days, allowing for the full spectrum electronic and visual of search capability,” Commander William J. Marks, spokesman for the U.S. 7th Fleet, said in an email.
The Chinese discovery was dramatically announced by Malaysia’s acting transport minister, Hishammuddin Hussein on Saturday, after he was handed a note with details during a news conference in Kuala Lumpur.
China said the object was 22 meters long (74ft) and 13 meters (43ft) wide, and spotted around 120 km (75 miles) “south by west” of potential debris reported by Australia off its west coast.
It could not easily be determined from the blurred images whether the objects were the same as those detected by Australia, but the Chinese photograph could depict a cluster of smaller objects, said a senior military officer from one of the 26 nations involved in the search for the plane.
The wing of a Boeing 777-200ER is approximately 27 meters long and 14 meters wide at its base, according to estimates derived from publicly available scale drawings. Its fuselage is 63.7 meters long by 6.2 meters wide.
Investigators believe someone on the flight shut off the plane’s communications systems, and partial military radar tracking showed it turning west and re-crossing the Malay Peninsula, apparently under the control of a skilled pilot.
That has led them to focus on hijacking or sabotage, but they have not ruled out technical problems. Faint electronic “pings” detected by a commercial satellite suggested it flew for another six hours or so, but could do no better than place its final signal on one of two vast arcs.
While the southern arc is now the main focus of the search, Malaysia says the search will continue in both corridors until confirmed debris is found.
“Hopefully, we will eventually provide some sort of closure or at least understanding of what happened on board Malaysian Airlines Flight MA370,” Australian Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss said.
“The search will continue and will continue as long as there’s hope.”
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said eight aircraft scoured two areas covering 59,000 sq km (23,000 sq miles) on Sunday, following news of the Chinese discovery.
Also of interest was a wooden pallet with various strapping belts that was seen by a civilian jet on Saturday.

Former President of the United States of America, Mr. Jimmy Carter has said that  President Barack Obama is the first president that has never solicited advice from him since he left office.
Carter told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that President Bill Clinton consulted him, the same way President George W. Bush and H.W. Bush and even Ronald Reagan did, adding that they used to call on him to when they wanted to go into sensitive areas.
Carter told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell that it is difficult to explain with “complete candor” why he and Obama do not have a closer relationship, but thinks it has something to do with his center at Emory University.
He believes the Carter Center’s views of equal treatment when it comes to the Middle East’s countries may have caused tension between him and Obama.
“I think the problem was that—in dealing with the issue of peace in between Israel and Egypt—the Carter Center has taken a very strong and public position of equal treatment between the Palestinians and the Israelis.
“And I think this was a sensitive area in which the president didn’t want to be involved.”
Carter also said that he left the Southern Baptist Convention last year after it passed rules at its annual meeting “to require that women be subservient to their husbands, and women could no longer serve as a pastoral priest or as a deacon.”
The former president had been part of the SBC for years before he left the church, serving as a deacon and Sunday School teacher for six decades, reports The Huffington Post.
Carter also commented on the problem of sexual abuse in the military and on the nation’s college and university campuses.
“Presidents of universities and colleges and commanding officers don’t want to admit that under their leadership, sexual abuse is taking place, so rapists prevail,” Carter said.
Carter also commented on the situation in Ukraine. In 1980, he banned U.S. athletes from participating in the Moscow Olympics after the then-Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, and said where the Ukraine is concerned, “there has to be a concerted international prohibition against Putin going any further than Crimea.”
Carter also discussed, shortly, the scandal concerning the National Security Agency and its surveillance practices.
“I have felt that my own communications were probably monitored,” said Carter, adding: “when I want to communicate with a foreign leader privately, I type or write the letter myself, put it in the mailbox and mail it… I believe if I send an email it will be monitored.”
Carter’s interview was done just days before the release of his new book, “A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence, and Power.”

Just over a year after leaving her job as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton has offered views on foreign policy that analysts said seem part of an effort to distance herself from the Obama administration as she prepares a possible 2016 White House run.
In appearances this month, Clinton struck a hawkish tone on issues including Iran and Russia, even while expressing broad support for the work done by Obama and her successor as secretary of state, John Kerry.
Clinton said in New York that she was “personally skeptical” of Iran’s commitment to reaching a comprehensive agreement on its nuclear program.
“I’ve seen their behavior over (the) years,” she said, saying that if the diplomatic track failed, “every other option does remain on the table.”
Just two weeks earlier, Clinton was forced to backtrack after she drew parallels between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler at a closed-door fundraiser. In comments leaked to the media by a local reporter who attended the event, Clinton said Putin’s justifications for his actions in the Crimean region were akin to moves Hitler made in the years before World War Two.
“I’m not making a comparison, certainly, but I am recommending that we can perhaps learn from this tactic that has been used before,” she said the next day at an event in Los Angeles.
As secretary of state, Clinton was a key player in a U.S. effort to reset relations with Russia, a policy that critics say now appears to be a glaring failure.
Clinton’s recent rhetoric on Iran and Russia is part of a renewed focus on foreign policy for the former first lady and New York senator, who is widely considered the Democratic presidential front-runner in 2016 if she chooses to run.
She has been giving speeches across the country since leaving the State Department, but Wednesday’s address was her first on-the-record event in recent months focused solely on international relations.
“Secretary Clinton is distancing herself a bit on foreign policy matters from the administration recently,” said John Hudak, a Brookings Institution fellow and expert on presidential campaigns.
“This is a pretty standard practice for anyone looking to succeed the sitting president, even within the same party.
“It’s one of the first steps for her to say, ‘We’re not the same candidate,'” he said.
Clinton’s office did not respond to questions about the issue.
Creating space between her position and Obama’s is a “smart move,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a New York-based Democratic strategist who worked for the 1996 presidential re-election campaign of Hillary Clinton’s husband, Bill Clinton.
“The present administration is in a no-win situation with Russia, with Syria and in the Middle East,” Sheinkopf said before Clinton’s New York speech.
“Making a distance from them can only help.”
During her four-year tenure in the State Department, Clinton helped lead the charge on imposing strong sanctions on Iran, which she mentioned in her New York speech to a pro-Israel audience-including several Democratic lawmakers-at an American Jewish Congress dinner honoring her.
In late January, Clinton sent a letter to Carl Levin, Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, calling herself a “longtime advocate for crippling sanctions against Iran,” but urging that Congress should not impose new sanctions during negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program.
She said that like Obama, she had no illusions about the ease or likelihood of reaching a permanent deal with Iran following an interim agreement reached under Kerry.
“Yet I have no doubt that this is the time to give our diplomacy the space to work,” a stance she reaffirmed on Wednesday.
Republicans have promised to make Clinton’s State Department record an issue if she runs for the White House, focusing on the 2012 attacks on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, in which four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed.
The Republican National Committee has condemned Clinton’s handling of the Benghazi assault, suggesting in a recent research note that “Benghazi is still the defining moment of Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State.”
Some political analysts see her toughening rhetoric as more than a campaign tactic, and fitting with her foreign policy statements before joining the Obama administration. They said that could broaden her appeal to voters if she chooses to run, a decision she has said will not come until the end of this year.
Clinton, while a senator, voted in 2002 for a resolution authorizing U.S. military action against Iraq, a position that hurt her with liberal primary voters in her losing battle with Obama for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.
“Making a credible and forceful case for America’s place in the world – that’s the kind of thing she’s likely to say and continue to say,” said Josh Block, a former Clinton administration official and now an executive at the Israel Project in Washington.
“Those are messages that will resonate with Democrats and independents, as well as some Republicans.”