Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska Nasty Landslide down in Wrangell

There were four people in that home

The visual is impressive. When I first read the story this morning, they said it was 200 feet long - just off by a factory of 10, or so.

We got all that moisture further north as snow - 18" in 12 hrs.

Yeah this is a bad deal. That storm was a big one.

There are quite a few homes on POW you couldn't pay me to live in for this reason. Its just a matter of when the mountain will come down. Port St Nick comes to mind. Or almost anywhere in Hollis.

Steep slopes that were cut clean and the trees left up above with nothing below to hold the weight. Im no soils specialist but I do see a common trend in a lot of theses slides.

Sad deal for sure. Thoughts go out to the families.

I got stuck behind a slide on hollis road for 10 hours yesterday. I had to run out there for 30 minutes to show a guy a house and it cost me my day. Ending up hanging out at the gold mine cookshack until the road was cleared. It was a crazy storm.

I heard it was rocking down there. Hurricane season in SEAK.

Listening to news tonight; 3 dead, 3 missing including 2 minors.

Sad deal.

Fark!

RIP.

Terrible tragedy. The residents of those homes on both sides of the slide are surely counting their blessings. RIP to the lost ones.

Looks like some near misses too!

Weather buoy out front clocked 103mph gust that night. Can't find the image now but one of the weather services posted an image of the data the other day.

Sad.

11:00 am Thursday November 23rd 2023



Authorities on Friday identified the three individuals who died and the three who remain missing from Monday’s massive landslide in the Southeast Alaska community of Wrangell.

Timothy Heller, 44, and Beth Heller, 36 — plus their children Mara, 16; Derek, 12; and Kara, 11 — were at home Monday night when the landslide struck.

Search crews found the bodies of the parents and the oldest child late Monday or early Tuesday; the younger children remain missing, as does neighbor Otto Florschutz, 65, the Alaska Department of Public Safety said in an emailed statement.

Florschutz’s wife survived the landslide and was in good condition while receiving medical care.

Bittersweet ending that. I have friends that live just a couple miles away, and had not been able to call them. Thank you for keeping us apprised on this, JeffA.

Not good. m

So the body of the 11 year old girl was recovered from the debris Saturday night, her 12 year old brother and there 65 year old neighbor, Otto Florschutz are still missing.

Otto Florschutz's wife was the lone survivor of this event and has a amazing story of her survival which she tells in the following.....


The sole survivor of last week’s deadly Wrangell landslide, Christina Florschutz, spoke Thursday with KSTK and the Wrangell Sentinel from her hospital bed.

Christina Florschutz: I had gone upstairs, which is important to the story, to take a shower because I like the shower up there. And I’d just gotten out of the shower and I was still just in my undies. And I heard this horrible noise, very loud noise and I recognized it. I’ve heard tornadoes. I’ve heard a mudslide before. I knew what was happening, but I didn’t have any warning. I heard the noise. And suddenly I’m like a piece of weightless popcorn being tossed around all over the places, slamming into things and everything. And then I don’t remember any more for a while. Apparently I was out for a little while.

And I could look, and my heart was just pounding and I was, I had so much adrenaline but I look and I could see some tree limbs. I was underneath this shelf edge that I figured out by feeling that it was part of the Styrofoam roof of the house. And that’s why the upstairs is important, because I was way up high and it was canted at an angle. And then there was a bunch of debris piled right here. But there was just enough room for me underneath there. I was getting rained on and it was very windy and I kept telling myself, “You can breathe, you’re not – you saw the tree, you’re not buried. You must be near the top of the pile, wherever it is.”

And I had no idea it was that big of a slide at that point. I touched a plastic bag ,and I instantly knew what it was, because I had a large plastic bag up there in my sewing room, which was upstairs. It was full polar fleece yardage. Right then and there, I knew I was going to live. I was going to live. I was meant to live. God put that there for me so that I wouldn’t die from hypothermia. So I squirmed back underneath there, and I untied the bag and pulled the polar fleece kind of up over me, and then pulled back over me to try and shield me from some of the rain anyway. And proceeded to wait until morning.

It wasn’t pleasant. It wasn’t fun. I got terribly cold, and I had awful leg cramps. I was screaming with the leg cramps at times. And during the night, it was still really dark. I heard a very strange thump, thump, thump. “What is that?” At first I thought it was somebody poking through the wreckage with a pole or something. And I’m hollering out, “Hey, I’m over here!” you know. And bump-bump, bump-bump, bump-bump. I then realize, “Oh, it’s one of my dogs sitting up there wagging its tail.” So I talked to the dog during the night and told him to bark when somebody came. So that if, I was kind of half out of it, I’d be able to holler. And I hadn’t seen her. She wasn’t there in the morning.

When it got light, I squirmed out of there. I was shaking really hard still. (At) my feet, right at that corner of the house, was this bag. And this is part of the story. It’s full of women’s extra-large and large jammy bottoms I buy at the thrift stores. They’re really good quality polar fleece. I shouldn’t be telling my secrets. I have a bag just for pajama bottoms. And so I put this pair on my head. I just pulled it over my head and then wrapped the legs around my neck and knotted it on. And then I put my arms in another pair and folded on another pair, and then there was some scraps in bag that are laying around that I could just wrap around my feet to protect them. And I took the bag with the rest of the jammy bottoms with me, because I knew once I got past that mudflat I was gonna be all muddy and horrid. And I would want to get some warm, dry clothing on, so I had that with me.

And I just decided to start going. I couldn’t go very fast, but I decided to just keep going. And I was about halfway across the debris field. I found a piece of siding from off the house. And when it was a really soft spot, I’d throw that out there and kind of step across it till I could get to a piece of debris that was more solid, and then grab it and go the next one. I have no idea how long it took, but I was so cold. Because then I’m out in the wind and the rain and everything. And I am so cold. And I get about halfway across that field and I can see where the trees are standing up. And there’s a great big log jam there, so it’s an edge.

And I see hats coming through the trees, baseball caps. People! “Boy, am I glad to see you!” And they heard me. They came and got me. And … it was not easy to get me across the rest of that field. It took about six or seven, and they put me in a sled and dragged me across that field. And they worked so hard to get me over there, because they were dragging that sled and they didn’t have the plywood, and they’re heavier and they’re sinking and stuff. And then they got me to a place where I could walk a little ways to them, put me in this toasty warm truck. That’s how I lived.

https://alaskapublic.org/2023/11/27/wrangell-landslide-survivors-story-in-her-own-words/

weather history online states that the temperatures were in the high 30s to low 40s during this event, they had approximately 3 inches of rain and winds gusting from 64 to 87 mph.

Wow!