Jessica Pszonka hugs Dayn Brunner after they spoke during an interview while visiting the memorial for Oso landslide on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024, in Oso, Wash. Dayn Brunner lost his sister Summer Raffo in the slide. Jessica Pszonka lost her sister Katie, two nephews, and three other family members.
Dayn Brunner visits the memorial for Oso landslide ahead of the opening on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024, in Oso, Wash. Dayn Brunner lost his sister Summer Raffo in the slide. Brunner and others spent years working on the memorial — holding fundraisers, lobbying lawmakers for money and attending planning committee meetings. They wanted to honor not just the lives lost, but the community response.
Jessica Pszonka and Dayn Brunner visit the memorial for Oso landslide ahead of the opening on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024, in Oso, Wash. Brunner lost his sister Summer Raffo in the slide. Pszonka lost her sister Katie, two nephews, and three other family members in the slide. Ten years later, that memorial is complete, and Pszonka is leaving: She put her home up for sale and is moving, with her parents, to Texas.
“It was really hard for anyone to imagine how enormous the impact was — that you really had to be there to see that this side of a mountain collapsed into the valley and up the other side, wiping out an entire community,” DelBene said. “I personally wanted to do anything I could to make sure that a natural disaster like this did not become another national tragedy.”
The massive mudslide that killed 43 people in the community of Oso, Wash., is viewed from the air on March 24, 2014. The Oso landslide scar is seen near a sign at the memorial site on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024, in Oso, Wash. The mountainside collapsed, obliterating a neighborhood and 43 lives in the worst landslide disaster in U.S. history.
People visit the site of the Oso landslide on Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024, in Oso, Wash. The trauma that engulfed Oso, a rural community of a couple hundred residents, on March 22, 2014, was a national wake-up call about the dangers of landslides. This March 23, 2014 photo shows a view of the damage from a mudslide near Oso, Wash. At least 43 people were killed in the 1-square-mile slide that hit in a rural area about 55 miles northeast of Seattle. Areas that have not burned have also suffered, such as the mountainous temperate rainforest of southeast Alaska, which has seen three deadly landslides on saturated slopes since 2015. The most recent killed six people in Wrangell last November.