A team of scientists and engineers will visit the Oso landslide next week to look for clues into what caused the disaster.
A six-person team from the Geotechnical Extreme Events Reconnaissance (GEER) Association is hoping to examine the area sometime next week, said UW geotechnical engineer Joseph Wartman, a geotechnical engineer based at University of Washington.
"The purpose is to collect data before the site is changed or altered in rescue and recovery," he said, according to a press release. "There is a lot of valuable information about how that landslide occurred in the landscape itself."
Eleven days after the landslide in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains in Washington state, 27 people have been confirmed dead and another 22 are missing.
The team is funded by the National Science Foundation to respond to geologic disasters in many different locations.
"The Oso landslide is one of many landslides that have occurred on slopes in the valley of the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River," GEER said in a statement. "The March 22, 2014 Oso landslide became a rapidly moving, channelized debris flow that spread out as it travelled about [0.5 miles], damming the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River, destroying and carrying away about 50 homes, and burying about 1 mile of State Highway 530."
The team will speak with people who witnessed the slide, collect data and make measurements in the field.
Researchers want to figure out how the slide happened in the first place and hopefully learn what can be done to help prevent a similar disaster from occurring again, according to the release.
The landslide has caused an estimated $32.1 million in damage.
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