Mudslide Rips Away Residence Ione Family Had Fled Before Slide Slammed Into House

Forewarned by two small mudslides, Darlene Smith and her daughter, Raquel, were safe at a friend’s house when a giant slide tore their home apart and swept it to the brink of the Pend Oreille River.

Three trees prevented a final plunge into the river.

If the Smiths hadn’t evacuated Wednesday night, they might have been sleeping when the house - a mobile home with a built-on addition - slid about 70 feet and collapsed. A power outage froze the home’s clocks at 11:34 p.m.

“It’s really hard to leave your home - even when it’s threatened,” Darlene Smith said. “I probably stayed there longer than I should have.”

Smith moved into the house 18 years ago with her husband, Dennis, who died in 1993 of AIDS caused by a transfusion of tainted blood when he was involved in a boyhood fireworks accident.

“The poor girl - I don’t know how much more she can take,” father-in-law Bill Seebach said.

The Seebachs live nearby, but Smith’s mother-in-law, Lila Seebach, still hadn’t surveyed the damage Thursday afternoon.

“I can’t stand to go down there,” Seebach said. “Those kids put so much of themselves into that place.”

Although there never had been a major slide before, Darlene Smith was aware that the ground around her home was unstable. She hired a contractor to reduce the danger by carving out terraces, and she spent last week emptying her garage so workers could move it out of their way.

“We should have been moving stuff out of the house instead of the garage, I guess,” Smith said.

Friends and relatives entered the wreckage Thursday morning to remove some clothing, important documents and memorabilia - including 16-year-old Raquel’s trophies from horse-riding competitions.

“Then the sheriff told us to get out,” said Bill Seebach.

The wreckage was considered too dangerous to approach as the bank continued to slough Thursday. A brief but intense storm pounded the area with sleet and hail as well as more rain.

Soil throughout northern Pend Oreille County already is saturated, and several slides have blocked highways. Most of the road closures have been brief, but the road to Sullivan Lake has been closed for a week because of a major slide.

Smith hadn’t calculated her loss Thursday, but noted the house and contents were insured for approximately $70,000. The home was a total loss, and Smith had little hope for the contents.

“There’re some things that we’ll never get out of there because the basement got all filled in with mud,” she said.

She said her insurance company, Grange Insurance, refuses to pay because she didn’t have flood coverage. But she may be eligible for federal assistance because of a recent storm-related disaster declaration.

“I don’t know what they would consider it, but it was a disaster,” Bill Seebach said.

Darlene Smith said the experience has given her new empathy for the disaster victims she sees on television, and renewed appreciation for her friends and neighbors.

“There were a lot of people out there helping and a million phone calls,” she said. “This community really pulls together whenever something happens.”

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