Ben Lomond >> The visual wounds of the 1982 Love Creek mudslide have begun to heal over with a covering of green trees and foliage.
The massive Washington state mudslide in March that claimed at least 33 lives, however, showed that memories of Love Creek and other local landslide events remain close to the surface for those affected.
In fact, for Ben Lomond resident Donna Schwartzbach, the matter remains deadly serious 32 years later. News of the Washington slide made her “sick to her stomach.”
“(Love Creek) was pretty scary, because you couldn”t see what was going on — it was dark and the fog had set in. At least it had stopped raining, but you couldn”t see anything until the next morning,” said Schwartzbach, who lives near the slide, by phone in a recent interview. “Unless you”ve lived here, you don”t get it.
“I feel sorry for every single one of them, because it”s going to be extremely difficult to get their lives back on track, even if they get to go home,” said Schwartzbach, who could not return to her house for more than five weeks after the 1982 mudslide.
In January 1982, a three-day rainstorm left 22 dead countywide, 10 victims of a mudslide near Love Creek. The now-gated property remains privately owned, but its former residents were not permitted to occupy or rebuild on and around the slide”s footprint.
Schwartzbach said she hopes residents of the rural region northeast of Seattle are able to return to their property after the cleanup, compared to the Love Creek area, when 26 neighbors were evicted by the county in the slide”s aftermath due to safety concerns.
Raw wounds
Living right on the edge of the abatement corridor, Schwartzbach said she has spent decades helping to police the abandoned private property, keeping tourists, trespassers and hikers alike away.
“We”re lucky we”re not in jail. For a while, I carried a .22 (gun) on my hip. We had a lot of people come up,” Schwartzbach said. “This is not a game to us. This was not a show for people. They should never have abated the property.”
Retired Ben Lomond firefighter Ed Hill, who was part of the Love Creek slide recovery effort, said he was very sorry Washington state residents had encountered such a tragedy.
“I think most of us are not excited about digging up dead people in the past,” Hill said. “It”s over. It”s a long time ago — 1982. I”d say those people have enough of their own grief without somebody coming out with a dry coat and trying to re-dig the old stuff here.”
News of the March 22 Washington mudslide caused visceral reactions among other county residents as well, whether because of Love Creek or other, smaller landslides. Santa Cruz County Supervisor Bruce McPherson described it as “some pretty ugly natural disaster memories we have here.”
“These days in Washington state it brings back terrible memories, the people who literally get swallowed up in that,” McPherson said. “It”s a no-chance situation.”
Volunteer response
The Santa Cruz County chapter of the American Red Cross recruited several of its local volunteers to join aftermath efforts in Washington within a week of the disaster.
“It”s going to be a long process,” said Red Cross spokeswoman Cynthia Shaw said in the days following the mudslide. “There”s just many many missing. As the shock wears off, the need increases.”
Red Cross volunteers specializing in logistics, nursing, mental health, sheltering and information dissemination traveled north for an average two- to three-week stay, given a day or less advance warning, Shaw said.
History of slides
In more recent landslides locally, Scotts Valley residents on Nelson and Ruins Creek roads and Sky Meadow Lane saw a portion of the nearby hillside collapse in a rockslide in March 2011.
While no lives were lost in the Nelson Road rock slide, 33 homes in the mountains were cut off from the outside for months, and even today a temporary road cuts around the slide.
In fact, the make-shift road travels past Joy and Tom Williams” mailboxes. The two described news of Washington”s slide as sending shivers down their spines.
“It made me realize that we were luckier that we did not lose anyone. It”s horrifying,” Joy Williams said. “I have some understanding, but not anywhere the degree to what they”re experiencing.”
Williams was working in her former alpaca corral during the slide and said she was temporarily penned in by falling debris, when it “did feel like the mountain was out to get me,” she said.
Williams said work to restore the original road is expected to begin this summer.
Ruins Creek Road”s Cindy Ferguson said her the rockslide cannot compare to Washington state”s tragedy — closer in nature, if not scope to the 1982 slide in Santa Cruz. At the time, Ferguson was living in Santa Clara Valley, but the tragedy hit home for her through friends who shared their tales of loss, she said.
“In the mountains … if it rains 10 inches for more than two hours, they (leave),” Ferguson said. “What (Washington) has is so much bigger than what we had (but) anybody who was around here in ”82 has to think about that; We saw what happened.”
