A Washington Initiative for change

The experience was surreal. A sleepy Sunday on a Seattle Downtown escalator, surrounded by people wearing NRA badges. Related to what’s happened in Washington State these past weeks, the memory comes back.

On October 24 a teenage boy shot five other teenagers and then himself in the Marysville-Pilchuck Highschool cafeteria in Snohomish County about an hour north of Seattle. Today five of the children are dead, only one survived. No, they weren’t young men or women, they were 14 and 15 year old children, three girls and two boys. Now dead by a gun. The reason for the deeply tragic shooting including relatives and members of the Tulalip Tribe will probably never be clarified. Funerals and memorial services so far have gathered thousands. 

The U.S. Mid Term Elections were held November 4. As always in a U.S election the different states are also going to the ballots about state initiatives. Which means, you give your vote pro or con a proposition which only affects your state. For example, Washington and Colorado earlier voted for legalization of marijuana for recreational use. Oregon followed in this election.

Now, on November 4 the people of Washington State were offered to vote on five ballot measures, one of them was Initiative 594, concerning background checks for firearm sales and transfers. The initiative makes sure anyone buying a gun in Washington State passes the same background check, no matter where they buy the gun and no matter whom they buy it from.

So, what about the experience on the Seattle Downtown escalator?

Well, it was a Sunday, I think in 1997. I had left my family in our Boyer Avenue home and took the car to Convention Center which I did three times a week to get my workout at Gold’s Gym. I would guess Trouble & Trouble were sitting at the dining room table drawing or playing with their next door friends Carel and Nick. 

I parked in the Convention Center garage and took, as always, the escalator to the gym floor. Although the Convention Center is a very public place, it is often surprisingly quiet. Not this Sunday though. A lot of people, a lot of badges. A lot of pins. I glanced at the messages. And remembered. This was the weekend for the National Rifle Association convention. I was surrounded by people who’s opinion was owning guns is more or less a human right.

Sensing the situation now I feel like I wanted to make myself as little as possible. Invisible. I was scared. I was surrounded by a culture so foreign to me I felt like I had landed on a different planet with evil aliens. Or being an extra in the escalator scene of a violent thriller.

What made the scene even more unreal was the fact there weren’t only men on the set. There were women. There were families. There were children. Children the same age as Trouble & Trouble momentary drawing at the dining room table on a slow Sunday afternoon. Children wearing pins saying “Don’t touch my gun”. It was surreal.

I feel now like that scene was in slow motion. I was at my step of the escalator standing as still as possible. Looking straight forward, glancing at the pins from the corner of my eye. Like, as if I didn’t move I wouldn’t stir the situation up and make it explosive.

Now, on November 4 Washington State voted yes on Initiative 594 and became the first state in the U.S. to close the background checks loophole by popular vote. 594 extends the currently used criminal and public safety background checks by licensed dealers to cover all firearm sales and transfers, including gun show and online sales, with reasonable exceptions. This is something to celebrate!

Some say this won’t change anything. If you want a gun you will get yourself a gun. And I’m sure that’s true. But it’s a start. It won’t bring Andrew, Nate, Zoe, Gia, Shaylee and Jaylen in Marysville back to life. And there will be more shootings, in schools, and elsewhere. But the people of Washington has made a strong mark. As the first state in the U.S. they want a change for the future.

The mudslide state

It is compared with the eruption of  Mount St. Helen’s in 1980, the devastating mudslide that happened a week ago. 

Floridas has the hurricanes. Nevada the killing heat waves. California the earth quakes. Indiana the tornados. State of Washington has the mud slides. That’s how the woman I talked to who lost her home back in 1996 at Christmas responded on my question about the danger in living on a bluff that slided.

It is raining in Washington. First the fall rains. Then the winter ones. And now the spring rains. The soil around the state is soaked with water. 18 people are confirmed dead. About 10 bodies are found but not identified. During the week the number of missing people have been 90, but today it dropped to 30. That’s bad enough. Exhausted searchers are wading in an extremely dangerous grey mess of deep clay and debris from homes, trees, cars and trailers. More rain is coming in and the wind is picking up.

It was last Saturday March 22 when the rain-soaked hillside near Oso, Arlington in Snohomish County about an hour north of Seattle slid away and demolished at least 30 homes and buried a milelong stretch of Highway 530 under 20 feet or more of mud. Wreckage is all that remains of neighborhoods along the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River. The situation is horrible.

The day after Christmas day 1996 it started snowing. Sounds nice, right, a white Christmas? The snow is usually wet and heavy in Seattle though, and as I remember it, a foot or more at that time. In the Portage Bay marina outside our living room window the roofs covering the boats collapsed and what was sheltered destroyed. The airport Seatac was closed for about 24 hours, the Metro bus system was down and there was practically no way to get from one place to another.

There were mudslides most everywhere, even in the city of Seattle. On my daily route from Downtown to Portage Bay that winter and spring I passed a couple of houses on an inclined lot with large cracks in their post modern concrete facade. I don’t know if the owners stayed in their homes or not. They felt like haunted houses. In the middle of the city.

What makes my heart still cramp though, is the house on the bluff that slided right into Puget sound. It was the home of a family who went to bed in the evening and were swallowed by the sea before dawn. The two children in the same age as Trouble & Trouble.

It rains in the state of Washington. A lot. And the geology doesn’t help. Layers of different kinds of soil on top of each other works like an avalanche when soaked with water, and the slide is a fact. There are opinions too that extensive clear cutting makes the situation worse. Also, people all over this planet want to live close to water. We are drawn to water like thirsting creatures in a desert and therefor building our homes in risky places.

This wasn’t really the case near Oso though. The neighborhood was on the opposite side of the river from the hillside that slided. Yet it wasn’t safe. And now it’s gone.

http://seattletimes.com/flatpages/local/interactivebeforeandafterthe530mudslide.html

The search team of professionals and volunteers have been working with crowbars, shovels, probes and tools from dawn until the dusk turns dark for a week now. There is clay like quick sand up to their thighs. Whenever they find human remains, they stop, mark the spot with GPS, and the remains are eventually removed using helicopters. Sometimes, when finding somebody underneath a pile of logs, they buck everything out of the way, digging it out by hand rather than by machine. The condition of some of the bodies has added to the difficulty of making identifications, the slide hit with such force that often the rescuers are not recovering full, intact victims.

Also, the entire mudslide site is believed to be contaminated with household chemicals, diesel and propane from heating tanks, mineral oil from transformers, and flammable gas tanks. The horrible situation is like a war scene.

At the eruption of Mt. St. Helen’s in 1980 57 people died. The state’s deadliest natural disaster occurred on March 1, 1910, when an avalanche swept two passenger trains down a ravine near Stevens Pass, killing 96. It will probably be weeks until we know the death rate of the Oso mudslide. The neighborhoods along the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River were only 180 people. A small community facing a great loss and unbearable difficulties, now and for many years ahead. 

To state that a Facebook page would make a difference in this situation sounds silly. But I actually think it does. Snohomish County set one up 17 hours ago to help coordinate fundraising and relief efforts. There is a concert announced, a silent auction, different fundraisers and simply communication between people from near and far. 1493 people likes the page, increasing by the minute. Around eight times more than the population of the community, now sadly reduced with an unknown number.

https://www.facebook.com/530SlideRelief