It would seem so, because by all appearances, the county was negligent in issuing building permits for the now-buried houses below Slide Hill.
The risk of this hill collapsing has been known for years, and the county apparently was warned, but seems to have ignored the danger. Now, dozens are dead, lawsuits are inevitable, and the county’s potential liability looms huge.
County officials are saying, “It was considered very safe. This was a completely unforeseen slide. This came out of nowhere.” That sounds like the words of people who expect to be sued.
Slide Hill partly collapsed in 2006, and this weekend’s slide was simply that previous slide coming the rest of the way dowm. According to the Seattle Times, a geomorphologist who wrote a report for the state Department of Ecology and the Tulalip Tribes in 1997 and another report for the Army Corps of Engineers in 1999 had warned of “the potential for a large catastrophic failure,” and now says he was “shocked” to see houses under construction there after the 2006 slide.
In the aftermath of what has happened, it’s hard not to believe that Snohomish County planning officials have placed themselves at the beck and call of developers, giving them whatever they want. And when did a developer not want permits? The same attitude was exhibited when the county fast-tracked permits for the Point Wells Development which are now being challenged in court.
Snohomish County taxpayers may have to pay big for the actions of their county officials. Assuming a couple million dollars of wrongful death damages for each fatality, it’s not hard to see the county’s liabilities ballooning into millions. A county bankruptcy filing might not be far behind.