A landslide in Ketchikan, Alaska, killed one person and injured three others on 2024-08-25, tearing down a steep hillside and crashing into several homes in the southeast Alaska city.
The slide cut a path through a thickly forested slope and triggered a mandatory evacuation of 60 nearby homes. Officials said four homes were critically damaged, and nearby buildings were still being assessed. Several homes and businesses also reported flooding.
AP identified the victim as Sean Griffin, a 17-year veteran of the city’s public works team who was clearing stormwater drains with a co-worker when the slide struck. Ketchikan Gateway Borough Clerk Kacie Paxton said Griffin had responded to the call for assistance during scheduled time off, underlining how ordinary municipal work became part of a deadly emergency.
The event unfolded after a weekend of rain, though the region had been unusually dry for August. The National Weather Service said Ketchikan received about 2.6 inches of rain in roughly 36 hours, with totals at higher elevations ranging from 5 to 9 inches. Meteorologist Andrew Park said the slide occurred without some of the usual red flags, such as high winds.
Residents described the moment the slope gave way. One woman, Leah Hazel Canfield, said she saw a flash of light before her home began rumbling. She and her spouse escaped with their dogs, then discovered that a neighbor’s house had plunged downhill and that debris, trees and a telephone pole had landed on their own roof.
Emergency managers declared an emergency, set up a shelter at Ketchikan High School and restored power to some areas by Sunday evening. Other neighborhoods were expected to remain without power while crews cleared debris and replaced broken poles. Officials said all other individuals were accounted for, though the exact number of displaced residents remained unclear.
The AP account also placed the landslide in a wider regional context. Southeast Alaska has seen deadly slides before, including a 2023 disaster in Wrangell that killed six people. The report noted that landslides in steep terrain can be triggered by heavy rain, soil saturation and destabilized slopes, and that climate change is increasing the risks in some communities.
That broader context does not change the immediate facts: a landslide hit a residential area, one worker died, three people were hurt, and families were forced out of homes while crews checked whether the hillside remained unstable.
Ketchikan is a cruise destination and a coastal city built against steep terrain, which makes even a localized slide a major public-safety event. The report left open the larger geologic cause, but the damage and the evacuation were already clear.
