Landslide caused by heavy rain cuts off rural Douglas County neighborhood

By Noah Chavez

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    ROSEBURG, Ore. (KEZI) — Residents of a neighborhood west of Roseburg are surveying the damage after a landslide flowed down into their properties over the weekend. Douglas County Public Works has been hard at work day and night to free the residents from the disaster zone.

Karla Riley and Jon Parman’s home on Oakley Road came very close to being swept away by the landslide. While their structure was spared, their property and land were damaged by the wave of mud and other forest debris. Riley said she still remembers the sound of the mountainside sliding down.

“It sounded like a very angry ocean waves rushing through the canyon,” Riley said. “It’s been horror, fear, and sadness.”

Riley and Parman are both retired from the US Forest Service and have a clear understanding of their property. Parman said the distance from the site of the collapse to where the debris stopped flowing was nearly a mile.

“I would guess there is thousands of cubic yards of material that fell from the point of origin. It’s still over a quarter of a mile,” Parman said. “If you see the wall of mud, this wall of mud is like this for another quarter of a mile up the hill.”

Since the landslide, residents living along Oakley Road said they have lived in fear, waiting for the rest of the mountain to give way. Riley said it is not a question of if, but when.

“Look at what it has done to our life, to our property, to our values, to our future and what’s left to come maybe worse than what we already experienced because there’s more slide to come down the hill,” Riley said.

Both of them, along with their neighbors, have strongly voiced their opposition to the county’s decision to allow the land above them to be clear cut back in 2023. The soil, which residents said was once held together by the roots of living trees, slid down to the surrounding properties as they claimed it would. Parman said he knew since moving to the property that the mountain overlooking his home was not suitable for logging.

“This mountain already has water flow problems. When you cut the trees down the canopy opens and you have more runoff,” Parman said.

“Clear cut… we are all opposed to… all of the neighbors who live on Oakley Road,” Riley said. “We don’t oppose logging, we just oppose clear cuts that affect people’s livelihoods like that.”

KEZI 9 News reached out to Douglas County for a comment regarding the residents’ claims of clear cutting. In a written statement, they said they could not comment on those claims at this time.

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