Jonielle Spillers, 32, was at work on Saturday morning local time when the mudslide surged across Highway 530 and covered her home on Steelhead Drive.
Her husband, Billy, 30, and their children JoJo, 13, Kaylee, 5, Jacob, 4, and Brook, 2, were all in the house. While Jacob was found by rescuers shortly after the mudslide struck, Spiller's husband and the other children are missing. "Please dear God pray," she wrote on Facebook.
Sanoah Huestis, a 4-month-old baby, and her grandmother, Christina Jefferds, are also among the missing.
Recordings of panicked calls to emergency services were released yesterday, capturing the moment the wave descended, sweeping away power lines and destroying up to 30 homes.
"There has been a huge landslide, and it has pushed the house all the way across the road," screamed one woman as she watched a neighbour's home get swept away. No one has been found alive since Saturday.
"Yesterday I reported that we didn't find any signs of life, and I'm saddened to tell you that this is the case again today from the night shift," said chief Travis Hots, of the Snohomish Country fire department.
Asked if the operation was moving from rescue to recovering bodies, John Pennington, director of the local department of emergency management, said his team was doing both, but had requested the help of mortuary teams.
Scientist gave warning in 1999
A scientist working for the Government had warned 15 years ago about the potential for a catastrophic landslide in the northwestern United States fishing village where the collapse of a rain-soaked hillside over the weekend killed at least 14 people and left scores missing.
With the grim developments came word of the 1999 report by geomorphologist Daniel Miller, raising questions about why residents were allowed to build homes on the hill and whether officials had taken proper precautions.
"I knew it would fail catastrophically in a large magnitude event," though not when it would happen, said Miller, who was hired by the US Army Corps of Engineers to do the study. "I was not surprised."
Snohomish County officials and authorities in the devastated fishing village of Oso said they were unaware of the study.
Watch: 'Situation very grim' in mudslide search
But John Pennington, director of the county Emergency Department, said local authorities were vigilant about warning the public of landslide dangers, and homeowners "were very aware of the slide potential".
In fact, the area has long been known as the "Hazel Landslide" because of landslides over the past half-century. The last major one was in 2006.
"We've done everything we could to protect them," Pennington said.
Patricia Graesser, a spokeswoman for the Army Corps of Engineers in Seattle, said it appears the report was intended not as a risk assessment, but as a feasibility study for ecosystem restoration.
Asked whether the agency should have done anything with the information, she said: "We don't have jurisdiction to do anything. We don't do zoning. That's a local responsibility."
No landslide warnings for the area were issued before the disaster, which came after weeks of rain.
Miller yesterday noted there are hundreds of similar landslides in Washington state each year, and this particular river valley has had three large slides in the last three decades.
Research scientist Jonathan Godt said landslides don't get that much attention because they often happen in places where they don't hit anything. But with Americans building homes deeper into the wilderness, "there are more people in the way".
- AP
