From 23rd Street in Hoquiam, Lon Howell looked through the windshield of his work vehicle to the top of Beacon Hill.
Perched at the summit sat two houses, side by side. Nearly two weeks ago, both houses had back yards, visible from the road. Now, the deck of one house dangled over a cliff and the other’s foundation sat exposed.
At about 7:15 on the morning of Jan. 5, after a day of record rainfall, Howell, the city’s only building official, walked across the street from his own home atop the hill to both houses and told the occupants to get out immediately.
“I condemned them right there on the spot,” Howell said from inside his work truck on Tuesday afternoon. “When I saw what had happened and saw the back yards on the edge like that, I thought, ‘They have to get out.’ There was no other choice.”
It’s been more than two weeks since landslides destroyed much of Beacon Hill Drive and made seven homes on top of the hill and below on Queets Avenue unlivable. Beacon Hill Drive itself was blocked, leaving residents at the top of the hill only a logging road on the backside to get on and off the hill. The main road was reopened Wednesday afternoon.
“Fortunately that road was there so people had access, but it’s still been a great inconvenience,” Hoquiam City Administrator Brian Shay said, adding that the city added cones and barricades to keep drivers safe on the poorly lit road.
Repairs to the road — which include soil removal as well as fixing the asphalt, sewer and water mains — are expected to cost the city about $800,000, Shay added.
An apartment complex at the top of the hill, Shay said, appeared to be on stable ground after an examination by the city’s geologists. The city recommended that the owner of the complex hire their own geologist to take a closer look, he added.
Even with repairs under way, Shay said the city is still concerned for the residents whose homes were condemned after the slide.
“Those are probably $200,000 homes and they are pretty much an entire loss,” he said. “So my heart goes out to those people.”
Driving through a restricted stretch of Queets Avenue, Howell pointed to other houses that met their fate on the morning of the 5th. At 2535 Queets, the landslide removed a house’s lower floor, leaving the second story sitting in its place. Up the street at 2313, the homeowners’ vehicles, Howell said, remain buried under the dirt.
Signs that Howell himself posted on houses along the north side of the street read “Do not enter; unsafe to occupy.”
In the four decades Howell has spent in Hoquiam, he said this is the worst natural disaster he’s seen. When he started working as the city’s building official seven years ago, he didn’t think he would ever have to condemn the homes of his neighbors.
“I didn’t have any expectations or idea of ever doing that,” Howell said.
But in the wake of the disaster, Howell commended city workers, crews with Rognlin’s Inc. — the contracting company tasked with cleaning up the mess on Beacon Hill Drive — and especially the residents of Hoquiam.
“Everybody worked together to tend to everyone’s needs,” he said. “It was really a blessing.”
Howell also did his part to help. After condemning the homes across the street, he opened his own doors and let one of the families live with him and his wife for a week. But he said he wasn’t in search of any recognition.
“I didn’t need to do that, I wanted to,” he said. “I wasn’t going to let them live in a tent.”
Mayor Jack Durney said residents’ use of social media drastically helped the recovery effort, and although Durney was amazed seeing neighbors helping neighbors, he said he wasn’t surprised.
“People would just come and stop and get out of a truck and just start helping,” Durney said. “It was an inspirational thing to observe.”
Moving forward, Durney added that city officials plan to see what they can do to better prepare for disasters in the future.
“We had our 100-year flood maybe, but we could have another hurricane-like event or something of that nature,” he said. “Once it’s over, it’s not over. We need to be prepared … so that people know what the options are a bit sooner.”
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