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justin giovannetti

I stood in front of the police blockade outside of Oso, Wash., just over a kilometre from the mudslide that only a day earlier had covered much of the village. Lights flashed and locals milled about, looking for something to do. Nine months earlier I had stood near a similar police line in the centre of Lac-Mégantic, Quebec. Many locals were looking for a similar distraction from the devastation.

While the tragedy in Quebec captured the country's attention for much of last summer, the disaster in Oso promises to be even worse.

Sitting in a vinyl booth of the Blue Bird Café, the centre of the historic downtown of nearby Arlington, I listened as locals went down the lists of those they knew were missing in the mudslide.

The first list of victims was nearly as high in Lac-Mégantic with as many as 100 feared dead in an instant during a warm Saturday morning as the centre of the small town was snuffed out by a runaway oil train. While the final toll in south-eastern Quebec eventually dropped to 47, Oso seems likely to bear an even more heart-wrenching loss.

Standing amidst the cheap wood and lighting of the Arlington Public Work's department, the first firm tally of victims from the mudslide in Washington State was met with shock last Wednesday. It was one of the rare moments where veteran reporters gasped. Officials had confirmed that five days after the ground fell nearby, 24 were confirmed dead and 90 people were still missing.

After authorities slowly tracked the missing and cross-referenced lists the current estimate is that 49 of the town's 180 residents were lost.

Last summer it took 13 days after the disaster in Lac-Mégantic to set the number of fatalities at 47 – to this day five victims have yet to be confirmed. That news was delivered as senior officials of the provincial police stood in crisp white uniforms, straddling the rails that guided the train to bend where it derailed.

Families in one community rode a rollercoaster of hopelessness, anger and sadness; those in Oso are still in the first stage, the outlines of the second are already clear.

From afar, the damage in Oso is hard to spot. The town has disappeared and it's hard to grasp what was once standing. Locals speak about how the Stillaguamish River was a great place to catch trout. That river is now a stream choked by mud.

It was impossible in Quebec's disaster not to grasp the enormity of what was lost. The centre of the town, the touristic hub of that part of the province, was blackened and burned. The destruction was limited to several small city blocks. The scene was compared to a "war zone" by first responders as more than 30 buildings were destroyed in an inferno fed by thousands of litres of highly explosive oil. Rail cars were piled four stories high, thrown by blasts.

The perceived villains in the saga were numerous and easy to abuse: the railroad, the oil company, the conductor, the track engineer and the media amongst others.

The scene of destruction in Oso is on a far more massive scale: mud with the consistency of fresh concrete spread over 2.5 kilometres. Homes were torn apart by the debris field, the bodies of motorists have been found in cars broken into dozens of large pieces. Ancient trees were tossed aside.

Who can be blamed in Oso? The anger is turning to first responders who have left search and rescue efforts when the ground threatens to give way again. Reports have also been unearthed that show the Army Corp of Engineers was aware of some danger from the unstable hillside. Left out of much of the reporting is that that study was commissioned to look at risks of possible silting in the river as engineers prepared to reintroduce fish. The danger was an afterthought.

What has struck me the most of Oso is the local volunteers. As professional responders opted for safety as the ground shifted, local volunteers snuck into the pile to search for bodies. They made their own roads and arrived with heavy equipment, many making grisly discoveries as they explored homes thrown hundreds of metres.

Oso's dead were at home enjoying a warm day alongside the Stillaguamish River when the mud began rushing down a hill.

With the disaster taking place a few kilometres from nearby Arlington, locals are not confronted by Oso's tragedy daily. As I walked daily on Olympic Avenue, the main street in Arlington, there were few few clues of the destruction nearby. No public grief, no large signs, no army of emergency vehicles.

"Everything went back to normal. School. Work. Life usual, which is odd, especially in a community so rooted here, going back generations," said Jessica Ronharr, an acting-pastor at Arlington United Church.

As an observer I'm struck by how both towns have approached a collective sense of hopelessness in vastly different ways. Quebec residents flocked to Mégantic – locals drop the Lac in the town's name from everything but the most polite of conversation – turning the main church into a shrine to the lost. Paper hearts and collages were ubiquitous. While it sometimes irritated residents, the local mayor invited the crowds to continue visiting and gape at the destruction from behind a chain-link fence.

The people of Arlington, Oso and the neighbouring community of Darrington have described themselves as "self-reliant and quiet." Last week they held a vigil downtown, many went to church and prayed. Those unwilling to wait for more answers have vowed to continue sneaking into the debris field and searching, expressing their grief in an attempt to find loved ones.

Outside of town I'm surprised to find a sign, "Get 'er done."

Lac-Mégantic served as a wake up call to North America of the dangers inherent in transporting vast quantities of oil by rail. New regulations have been drafted and the rail and oil industries have reacted. While the families continue to grieve, they take solace that they can rebuild. While vast amounts of contaminated soil will need to be removed but Lac-Mégantic will return. The picturesque town will eventually see a new downtown, with parks and monuments dedicated to the lost.

The residents of Oso may not be so lucky. Mudslides have shaken the area every decade for most of a century. Many locals say they didn't know of the danger before the mudslide on a quiet Saturday in March. Once the rubble is cleared, few will return.

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