The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

The town of Darrington, Wash. sits in a beautiful spot in the Stilliguamish River Valley in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, northeast of Seattle. Its population is roughly the same as Waitsburg's.

When a giant landslide wiped out a small community called Oso just down the road, Darrington became a town in crisis.

As The Times went to Press, 33 people were confirmed dead from the slide, and seven are still missing. Dozens of homes were destroyed. A sea of mud and trees many feet deep still covers the slide area. The slide also wiped out the road from Darrington to Arlington, the town's main access to larger cities and towns.

Many of those lost in the slide were wellloved members of the Darrington community. Those of us who live in small towns like Waitsburg, Dayton, Prescott and Starbuck can't even imagine the effect a tragedy on that scale would affect our small communities.

Volunteers have been working non-stop since the March 22 disaster, first to try to find survivors, and then to try to locate victims. Emergancy workers from as far away as California made the trip to the area around Oso to help.

On this week's front page, Dena Wood reports on Columbia County Public Information Officer (and former Times editor) Dian Ver Valen's trip to Arlington and Darrington to help with search and rescue efforts at the landslide. It's a great privilege that our local officials are able to help other small towns in their hour of need.

Ver Valen was able to put her training and experience to work as a PIO to provide help in Darrington (and Arlington). Her experience there will in turn be invaluable to our local communities if and when our hour of need comes.

Many people here remember well the flood of 1996 and the fire of 2006. These episodes were highly stressful on our communities, and many volunteers from outside our area came to help out.

But they paled in comparison to the tragedy that struck the area outside of Darrington.