Survivors and family members of people killed in the nation’s deadliest landslide have reached $60 million in settlements with the state of Washington and a timber company that logged an area above the site of the collapse.
Just as opening statements were due to begin in a Seattle courtroom Monday, Grandy Lake Forest Associates agreed to settle liability claims for $10 million. The announcement came just after the state on Sunday reached a $50 million deal with the plaintiffs.
The slide on March 22, 2014, killed 43 people when it wiped out a rural neighborhood in Oso, northeast of Seattle. Survivors and relatives of the victims alleged that logging above the slide and construction of a retaining wall along a bank where the Stillaguamish River undercut the hill increased the danger, and residents never were warned about it.