Mudslide Kills 4 as Storm Soaks Oregon

A rain-soaked hillside broke loose in southern Oregon, swallowing up a home and killing the four people inside as flooding closed roads, stranded motorists and forced people from their homes in the western part of the state.

A newspaper deliveryman who was swept down the hill by a wall of mud and debris survived.

The deluge, which began Monday and was tapering off Tuesday, was caused by a “Pineapple Express”--a weather pattern that brings moisture-laden tropical storms to the Northwest, said National Weather Service meteorologist Steve Todd in Portland.

Douglas County sheriff’s deputies recovered four bodies from a rural home 30 miles northwest of Roseburg that was bulldozed by a huge mudslide Monday evening.

“The house is now kindling. There are utensils and shoes scattered to kingdom come,” Sheriff’s Capt. Robert Stratton said.

Killed in the mudslide were Rick Moon, 46, and his wife, Susan Moon, 44, neighbor Sharon Marvin, 40, and an unidentified woman.

The Moons’ children were not hurt. Their daughter, Rachelle, who is in the 11th grade, was reportedly sent from the house by her father. Their son, Justin, a seventh-grader, was helping a neighbor clear mud down the road and escaped injury when someone yelled a warning.

Arnold Ryder, 70, who was delivering evening newspapers in the area, said he heard a man “holler to the little boy to ‘Run! Run! Run!’ ”

Ryder said he was walking to his car in the rain when he heard “four or five of those great big trees crack, and a big roar like a freight train” as the mudslide rushed toward him.

“I grabbed a tree and hung onto it. It was too much. Down over the hill I went, praying all the way,” he said.

Ryder came to a stop about 150 feet down the hill.

“My mouth was filled with gravel and dirt and I had to dig it out,” he said. His leg was pinned under a tree, and paramedics eventually freed him. He suffered scrapes, broken ribs and hypothermia.

Nearly 5 inches of rain fell along the central Oregon Coast and in the southern Willamette Valley in 24 hours. North Bend on the southern coast reported 6.66 inches.

Mudslides closed Interstate 5 in southern Oregon, and traffic slowed to a crawl in the populous Willamette Valley because of high water.

U.S. 101, the main coastal route, was closed by high water in the southwest corner of the state at Port Orford and near Bandon.

Gov. John Kitzhaber declared a state of emergency in rural Lane County, where flooding along the Willamette and Mohawk rivers forced the evacuation of several hundred residents, including occupants of a nursing home.

Numerous road closures were reported in the mountains because of downed trees, slides and high water, said Oregon Department of Transportation spokesman Ed Schoaps.

In Washington state, the moist air from Oregon colliding with cold air from British Columbia to the north caused an early winter storm that buried some areas under 2 feet of snow.

The storm snarled traffic and closed roads, knocked out power to thousands of people and shut schools.

A hunter was killed when a large pine tree snapped from the weight of heavy snow and crushed the motor home where he was sleeping near Naches in south-central Washington, the Yakima County Sheriff’s Department said.