Fatal Slide Began In Clearcut Foresters Say There’s No Link, Blame Heavy Rain

The mudslide that killed four people outside Roseburg, Ore., this week came out of a 10-year-old clearcut on steep terrain, state forestry officials confirmed Friday.

A state district forester said he didn’t think the slide was related to the old logging, but environmentalists said research indicates mudslides are more prevalent and of greater magnitude on hillsides where logging has occurred in the past 20 years.

The slide at the head of Rock Creek 12 miles northwest of Roseburg was more likely related to the 7 inches of rain that fell in the 10 hours before the slide, said Steve Truesdell, Douglas District forester for the Oregon Department of Forestry.

“At this time I’m not thinking anything happened due to logging or road building,” Truesdell said.

But Francis Eatherington of the environmental group Umpqua Watersheds and Andy Stahl, director of the Association of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, said a connection was likely.

An aerial survey of forest landslides after last winter’s flooding showed an overwhelming number were in areas that had been clearcut or where logging roads had been built, Stahl said.

The U.S. Forest Service long has mapped areas likely to slide above people’s homes and doesn’t allow logging there. The state Department of Forestry hasn’t followed suit, Stahl said.

“The state Forest Practices Act allows harvest to occur on steep unstable soils,” Eatherington said. “We’re going to have to change this and start taking into account not only people’s watersheds, clean drinking water and fisheries, but we also have to take into account people’s lives.”

The state Department of Forestry sent up a plane Wednesday that came back with photographs of where the slide originated, but no one from the department or the timber firm that owns the land has gone to the point of origin.

Champion International owned the 168-acre parcel when it was logged in 1986 and 1987, said Truesdell. Seneca Jones Timber Co. of Eugene now owns it.

Because of the steep terrain, the Department of Forestry recommended Champion haul the downed logs through the air on cables to minimize erosion, Truesdell said. The department also recommended Champion remove logging debris from draws. The area was fully reforested. Champion complied with all the Department’s recommendations and passed all inspections, Truesdell said.

Seneca bought Champion’s 100,000-acre tree farm in Douglas County in 1992.

The slide started near the ridge line at the head of a steep draw near the headwaters of Rock Creek and came down through a parcel of U.S. Bureau of Land Management old growth timber before slamming into Rick and Susan Moon’s house Monday evening. The slide killed the Moons along with neighbor Sharon Marvin, who was in the house with them, and Ann Maxwell of Roseburg, a friend who was walking up the road.

The Moons’ 16-year-old daughter, Rachelle, escaped when her father yelled at her to run out of the house. Neighbor Todd Corbett and the Moons’ 13-year-old son, Justin, were outside and managed to run out of the way.