"I had just put in a full season of transporting mobile homes and I was relaxing at home with my family after the holidays. On Dec. 31, I woke up to a terrible exploding, crashing sound, so I ran up to my daughter's room on the second floor of the house to look out the window. I saw trees, I mean big trees, second growth redwoods that were growing in a creek, snapping to the ground one at a time, snapping and slamming to the ground.
Now there's a 28-inch culvert beneath my home, which has been there for 30 years. The night before, there had been a lot of water flowing through, and I realized that if some debris were to clog it up, I could lose the foundation of my house.
So I ran out to my backyard. The creek that runs in the back of my house was basically trickling...I knew that a monster dam was up above somewhere. Then it swoll, and swoll, and swoll and broke and came down at me like molten lava. That's literally what it looked like. It was approximately 18 feet high of solid mud with an old growth stump floating on top.
I started running back and forth between my next door neighbor's driveway and my driveway, trying to figure out which way it was going to go. I got everyone evacuated to the frontage road before the slide reached and took out my next door neighbor's mobile home and mud surrounded about 4 houses, including mine.
Then it rained again, all night into the day on Jan.1, 1997. At 4:30 am the build-up broke again and exploded; it seemed like the entire mountain had come down, bringing with it 60-80 foot stumps. The slide travelled straight through town, filling it up like a big loaf of bread.
The next slide will just pour over the sides of last years mud and will probably take out the homes on the south side and will possibly pour over the highway. I've walked up on the mountain this summer to check things out; there are still at least 25 acres up there fractured with huge fissures, so big my dogs kept falling in."
Stafford residents are upset with the way Maxxam has treated the community and how the corporation is dealing with the situation.
If you would like more info regarding this issue, please contact the MEC.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 1997
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited