At Least 24 Dead in Washington Landslide
COSTELLO: We'll get back into the investigation in Flight 370 in just a minute. But, first, officials say the number of people missing in Washington state's landslide has dropped dramatically to 90 from 176. At least 24 people were killed Saturday when a massive hillside crashed down on towns in the Cascade Mountains. Eight bodies have been found, but still not recovered. I guess they've been detected but not recovered. Some are asking if this tragedy could have been prevented after a nearby landslide in 2006 and expert warnings about new construction. For victims' families, the focus is on coping with this. Here's more from CNN's Ana Cabrera.</s>CABRERA (voice-over): This morning, a mother's unspeakable pain after her son pulled the body of her daughter from the debris.</s>RAE SMITH, LOST HER DAUGHTER IN LANDSLIDE: My heart is broken. It's broken.</s>CABRERA: Summer Raffo was driving on a state road at the time of the slide. Rescue workers continue their mission five days after the side of this hill came cascading down on Snohomish County. Peter Selvig, a volunteer with the state's Incident and Response team knows this community well. He's lived here for 40 years. Familiar places on this map have a new somber reality.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This guy lived and his wife died. We were on the school board together for about 30 years.</s>CABRERA: The heavy equipment used to breakthrough concrete and lumber continues to unearth personal tragedies.</s>ERIC FINZIMER, FIREFIGHTER: We can't lose hope. We're here to find those people.</s>CABRERA: Governor Inslee telling CNN he expects the death toll to rise significantly.</s>GOVERNOR JAY INSLEE, WASHINGTON STATE (via telephone): I don't think anyone could reach any other conclusion. The force of this landslide just defies imagination.</s>CABRERA: This daring rescue of a 4-year-old boy plucked from the mud on Saturday is one of several miraculous stories of survival. The man who helped saved him telling CNN, he saw his own grandson in the boy.</s>RANDY FAY, SNOHOMISH COUNTY HELICOPTER CREW CHIEF: I see myself thinking about Eli when that's going on. So, you want to help and so you kind of carry that.</s>CABRERA: An event that has touched so many here showing both how fleeting and precious life can be.</s>PETER SELVIG, RETIRED FOREST SERVICE WORKER: I always told my kids, you know, after you -- after you call them, it's kind of hard for me, but say "I love you" because that might be the last time you're going to see them.</s>CABRERA: The people in this community clearly have so much love for each other, which is helping people to get through this and to at least begin some of the healing process. As soon as daylight arrives, we know there will be 200 emergency responders back out there scouring this one square mile of unspeakable devastation. Continuing to look for any sign of life and also trying to get answers for those families who are missing their loved ones, Carol.</s>COSTELLO: All right. Now we have to talk about the tough stuff. There was a landslide there in 2006. In 1999, scientists did this study saying there was a possible risk of a catastrophic land -- you know, mudslide, landslide. Was anyone listening?</s>CABRERA: Well, you know, officials say they were aware of the danger to a certain extent. We've been asking a lot of those tough questions to the emergency responders, to state authorities, to federal authorities and the local authorities. And they admit, you know, there are more questions to answer but still want to stay focused on the task at hand and said, we'll get to the bottom of all of that later. Here's what we do know as we've been continuing to research what this area entails. We do know there have been smaller slides dating back to the 1950s, 1951, 1967, 1988 and then the 2006 slide that you mentioned. There has been damage in those slides but no loss of life. And so, people who moved into this area did have, I think, an understanding to a certain degree that landslides were possible but again, was there a specific warning as to what ended up happening that it could happen? We know there was a 1999 study that suggested it was possible, but nothing that happened maybe just before and the days before that we know of that would have given people time to evacuate before the land just ripped away. It certainly sparked a conversation, though, about whether homes should be allowed to be built in these landslide prone zones.