ARLINGTON, Washington: The likely death toll from a devastating weekend
landslide in Washington state rose to 24 on Tuesday after rescue
workers recovered two bodies and believed they had located eight more,
the local fire chief said.
As many as 176 people remained listed as missing three days after a
rain-soaked hillside collapsed on Saturday, tumbling over a river,
across a state road and into a rural residential area where it buried
dozens of homes near the town of Oso.
The discovery of additional bodies came as crews searched in drizzling rain for survivors amid fading hopes that anyone could still
be plucked alive from the massive pile of heavy muck and debris. 
“Unfortunately we did not find any signs of life today, we didn’t locate
anybody alive, so that’s the disappointing part,” local fire chief
Travis Hots told a media briefing, adding that the official death toll would remain at 16 until the eight sets of
remains could be extricated and sent to the medical examiner.
Officials said they were hoping that the number of missing would
decline as some of those listed may have been double-counted or were
slow to alert family and officials of their whereabouts. Eight people
were injured.
But the disaster already ranks as one of the deadliest landslides in
recent US history. In 1969, 150 people were killed in landslides and
ensuing floods in Nelson County, Virginia, according to the US
Geological Survey.
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