Mudslides trigger call for clear-cut answers

GLENOMA, Lewis County —

Back in September, Mark Hornby left a construction management job in Utah to return to his family's farm in this Cascade mountain valley. He wanted to raise cattle and his two young daughters on land that his grandfather once cleared with mules.

During the intense rainstorms two weeks ago, a clear-cut slope behind the farm gave way. A chocolate-colored wave of mud, stumps and slash killed three calves, tore down fencing and enveloped most of the pasture.

Another slide funneled into a creek as Hornby and his younger brother, Jon, were trying to clear a culvert. They got out of the way minutes before the slide blew through.

"It's been pretty devastating," said Hornby, 27, who estimates the farm sustained several hundred thousand dollars in damage. "I had this beautiful master plan for the farm that we could raise natural beef. This wasn't in the plan."

Landslides in the upper Cowlitz Valley caused an estimated $4.5 million in private-property damage, destroying eight homes and striking dozens of other properties including a tavern, a golf course and a fish farm that lost more than 200,000 Arctic char and steelhead.

Many mud-struck property owners can look at the nearby hillsides and spot the logged sites where the slides originated.

In a 6-mile stretch of hillsides north of Glenoma, state Department of Natural Resources aerial surveys tallied 116 slides. Nearly 80 percent came from lands logged in the past 20 years or roads built to access timber, according to a Seattle Times analysis.

Some of the property owners are looking to the timber companies for help to rebuild.

"I know this wasn't an intentional thing," Hornsby said. "But I want my farm back. I want everything restored."

Timber companies aren't about to shoulder the blame for everything that happened.

Their representatives note that the trigger for the landslides was a huge amount of rain dumped on the mountains at a time when deep snow piled up even on lower slopes. They add that there were plenty of slides in older, more intact forests across Southwest Washington.

But some timber companies are talking with property owners about how they can assist.

"We are going to help them. We're neighbors," said Court Stanley, president of Port Blakely Tree Farms, a privately owned timber company that manages about 45,000 acres in eastern Lewis County.

Port Blakely acquired the acreage just north of Glenoma in 2004. He said landslides that damaged five Glenoma properties came from tracts logged by a previous owner.

State forestry laws, based on scientific studies, acknowledge that logging can increase the number and size of landslides unleashed during big storms. The rules have evolved over time in an effort to limit clear-cutting of unstable slopes where slides could put public safety or public resources at risk.

But during the January storm, slides occurred on many sites that state regulators thought were stable enough to log.

Damage from the storm is a sensitive issue here, since Glenoma has deep ties to logging. Local mills prospered in the late 1970s and '80s on large harvests from federal forests.

But the community has struggled during the past 20 years as logging on federal lands was restricted for conservation reasons. Mills closed, and an exodus of families in the upper Cowlitz Valley caused a big drop in local school enrollment.

The industry now cuts mostly on state and private lands, which are more likely to be near farms and businesses.

When some of those lands slid this month, the timber companies were among the first to lend a hand. Their workers cleared away muck, spread gravel and donated appliances.

But there was still tension when hundreds of Glenoma residents showed up at a Jan. 16 meeting in the local school gymnasium for a briefing on disaster assistance.

"It's not going to be a blame game tonight," Chief Deputy Sheriff Gene Seiber declared. "... This is my meeting, and if it gets a little out of hand and there are personal attacks and things like that, then this meeting will be over."

Several timber-company representatives were at the meeting, including Port Blakely's Stanley, who canceled a trip to New Zealand to talk with local residents. He said Port Blakely already had made a $10,000 donation to a relief fund and was going to offer more help.

"We are going to be here for 100 years," Stanley said. "We want to make it right."

The Hornby family hopes for a check from Port Blakely that will cover the costs of repairing fences, clearing land, rebuilding corrals and pens, leasing new grazing pasture and other expenses.

Mark Hornby notes that the hillside stripped of timber had numerous springs, a sign of potential instability, and that the landslides originated near two of these springs. A 2000 geological report found that most of the area was stable, with the exception of small areas on steep slopes and in locations of concentrated groundwater.

Port Blakely officials have met several times with the Hornbys and toured the property. They have asked for a detailed list of the damage to review. The company said no determination has been made about what type of assistance will be offered — or what form it might take.

"We'll sit down and talk about things we can do for them," said Duane Evans, a Port Blakely vice president.

Other valley residents still are trying to unravel the tangled ownership histories of the lands that unleashed the slides.

West of Glenoma, the fish farm was struck by a mudslide that came out of an old clear-cut.

It cut off a water flow, and that killed dozens of tons of fish. If raised to maturity, they would have been worth several million dollars, according to Brad Mencke, whose family operates the business. The family is tracking the ownership of the nearby tract, which was transferred from state Department of Natural Resources ownership in 1985 and later logged. It is still unclear whether the state retained timber rights when it was logged, according to Aaron Toso, an agency spokesman.

East of Glenoma, severe mudslides nearly buried Linda Mitchell inside her home, wrecking the house and the Roadside Tavern she owns next door.

Some slides started in steep, second-growth timber that in recent years was put off-limits to logging by state forestry officials. Other slides started on land cut about two decades ago. One came from a recent clear-cut.

So far, there have been no offers of assistance from the timber company involved in the recent cut, she said.

But community volunteers cleared out the mud from the tavern last weekend.

Hal Bernton: 206-464-2581 or hbernton@seattletimes.com