Rescuers clawed through piles of mud, rocks and trees early on Sunday trying to reach survivors of a giant landslide that killed three people in the northwestern United States.
At least eight people were injured, including a six-month-old infant, when the face of a rain-saturated mountainside slid down on Saturday, destroying six homes in the rural community of Oso, northeast of Seattle, local police and firefighters said.
“We have people who are yelling for help and we are out there,” Travis Hots, the district fire chief in Snohomish County, Washington State, told reporters. “This is a massive slide, and we are in a very, very fluid and unstable situation,” said Hots. “We are going to take extreme risks to get them out of there.” Search teams used thermal imaging cameras to aid rescue efforts, the Snohomish County sheriff’s office said in a statement.