West Seattle Weather Watch: Heavy rain could bring slide risk

Though right now it just looks like nothing-out-of-the-ordinary rain, the National Weather Service has a “special weather statement” in effect for our area and much of the region, warning that this could bring two to four inches of rain to the lowlands today and tomorrow. Despite the recent dry spell, the NWS warns, “the predicted rainfall by itself will be enough to raise the landslide risk to ‘moderate’.”

P.S. Think you’re totally slide-savvy? Check this city info-sheet, which includes maps of the 8.4 percent of Seattle that is slide-prone, as well as factoids (January is the month with the highest slide risk). The image at left is taken from that map – the dots show the locations of past slides, while the salmon-shaded areas show what are considered to be “potential slide areas.”

L January 4, 2015 (11:59 am)

Here’s a question for homeowners in the red zones of that slide map: What’s the insurance situation for landslides? Is there any insurance that would cover something like the 1996 Perkins Lane slide?

Karen Lyons January 4, 2015 (12:36 pm)

West Seattle Green Spaces Coalition is meeting, today, to talk about the clearing of vegetation from SCL substations. This warning is worrying. SCL has already cleared vegetation off of some substations with slopes.

WSB January 4, 2015 (12:52 pm)

Our preview: https://westseattleblog.com/2015/01/1st-community-meeting-of-the-year-seattle-green-spaces-coalition-on-sunday-afternoon/

landslide January 4, 2015 (12:46 pm)

I found this…

http://www.insurance.wa.gov/your-insurance/home-insurance/landslides/

Mike January 4, 2015 (2:38 pm)

Overdeveloping, paving, removing vegetation, more runoff / overflow, these all add up to catastrophic slides. Density is not the answer, it’s the problem.

John January 4, 2015 (5:04 pm)

Density has nothing to do with the sliding sloughing of our hillsides over the last thousand years. Our land is young, glacially carved and deposited at the ends and sides of steep fjords.
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If he is correct and density is the problem, then what should Mike do?
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Karen Lyons,
If you are claiming SCL has done vegetation removal on Steep Slopes without permits, please tell us where and then please contact DPD to report it. http://www.seattle.gov/dpd/codesrules/makeacomplaint/default.htm

ChefJoe January 4, 2015 (6:39 pm)

While disconnecting downspouts from storm sewers/for rain barrels is all the rage, beware that guidelines to do so say not to do it within 500 ft of a steep slope.
http://www.seattle.gov/util/groups/public/@spu/@usm/documents/webcontent/spu01_006284.pdf

ChefJoe January 4, 2015 (6:55 pm)

Here we go, interactive viewer you can type your address into and highlight steep slopes and potential slide areas.

http://web1.seattle.gov/dpd/maps/dpdgis.aspx

Mike January 5, 2015 (9:49 pm)

John, hate to tell you, but it does. There is a rapid rise in the loss of hillsides since 1900, year over year. Why? Because we keep removing vegetation, paving and not allowing for proper drainage. When you let more water run over and under dirt where there used to be roots, you no longer have anything to hold it in place. It’s not rocket science, it’s actually something most people learn about in grade school. We’re developing faster than our infrastructure is keeping up to handle the load. We’re about 30 years behind on keeping up with development demands to handle the excess runoff and sewage. We’ll only see more landslides with much larger losses.

John January 6, 2015 (8:23 am)

Mike,
Please provide proof to your claim “rapid rise in the loss of hillsides since 1900”.
Even a school kid knows that our hillsides are young, steep and sloughing.
Areas not developed or logged also suffer landslides. How does a a grade school education explain that?
You mix up Federal regulations citing our lack of infrastructure to TREAT ALL water flowing into the Sound. The infrastructure for handling the water has been here for a century. New rules no longer allow us to dump sewage and runoff through the existing infrastructure into Puget Sound as in the past.
Mike also fails to acknowledge the new restrictions heretofore unheard of regulating hillside development.
Mike, Please take a peek at Seattle’s Environmentally Critical Areas codes for facts.

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