Recovered From Mudslide: Infant Girl's Body

Four-month-old brings official death toll to 25
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 28, 2014 6:53 AM CDT
Recovered From Mudslide: Infant Girl's Body
Tina Ray, wife of the pastor of the Oso Community Chapel, helps to spell out a sign to let passersby know of available resources Thursday, March 27, 2014, near Oso within Snohomish County, Wash.   (AP Photo/seattlepi.com, Jordan Stead)

The death toll in the Washington mudslide hit 25 in heartbreaking fashion yesterday, when rescue workers found the body of a 4-month-old girl amidst the debris. Sanoah Violet Huestis was found near the location where her grandmother's body was recovered Sunday, USA Today reports. "It's an absolute relief. Now we can move on," her mother, Natasha Huestis, 26, tell the LA Times. The name Sanoah means "mist in the mountain" in Hawaiian. "And you know, she's in the mountains right now," Huestis said earlier this week.

There are still 99 people missing, and more than 200 workers are searching the scene for them. Teams are carefully approaching each house using machines that cut out small, searchable chunks. But "it's very hard to be methodical in this situation," one fire chief says, given the waist-deep mud they're often working in. The rainfall that caused the mudslide in the first place will take a long time to soak into the ground, one geologist tells National Geographic. He also explains that the mudslide was unusually deadly because it was unusually fast. "This particular landslide has a history of movement," he said. "But this time it moved much farther." (More mudslide stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X