Saturday,  March 29, 2014 • Vol. 16--No. 255 • 27 of 33

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Washington officials all but abandon hope of finding mudslide survivors, keep death toll at 17

• ARLINGTON, Wash. (AP) -- Washington state officials all but abandoned hope Friday of finding survivors under tons of twisted, sodden earth as a community waited in anguish to learn the full scope of what is already one of the most devastating landslides in U.S. history.
• The grueling process of locating, extracting and identifying human remains from the unstable debris covering the community of Oso northeast of Seattle has slowed the release of information by the Snohomish County Medical Examiner's Office to a trickle.
• Crews may be finding more remains amid the destruction, but the official death toll will remain at 17 until medical examiners can complete the "very, very challenging" task of identifying the bodies, said Snohomish County Executive Director Gary Haakenson.
• Authorities have located at least eight other bodies in addition to the 17, and they previously said they expect the number of fatalities from Saturday's mudslide to rise substantially.
• Ninety people were listed as missing, but hope for them began fading by midweek when they had not checked in with friends or relatives, and no one had emerged from the pile alive.
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Washington mudslide survivor tells of swimming to surface after 'wave' of mud, water hit home

• DARRINGTON, Wash. (AP) -- The roar of the hillside collapsing was so loud that Robin Youngblood thought an airplane had crashed. But when she looked out the window of her mobile home, all she saw was a wall of mud racing across her beloved river valley toward her home.
• "All I could say was 'Oh my God' and then it hit us," Youngblood told The Associated Press. "Like a wave hit our mobile home and pushed it up. It tore the roof off of the house. When we stopped moving we were full of mud everywhere. Two minutes was the whole thing."
• Youngblood is among the few survivors of the massive, deadly mudslide that destroyed a rural community northeast of Seattle last weekend. Five days after the de

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