Try tiny house living before you buy
Arrest made in Mukilteo shooting
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THURSDAY, 12.24.2015
By Kari Bray Herald Writer
LAKE STEVENS — Calls are coming in to the city about private docks underwater around the lake, but officials say it’s nothing out of the ordinary for a rainy December in Snohomish County. The rising level of Lake Stevens, which is now inches below a record high, is striking after this summer’s drought. Lakes and rivers around the county dropped noticeably lower than usual after weeks without rain and minimal snowmelt from the mountains. Now snow is starting to pile up in the mountains, and several rainstorms hammered the lowlands this fall. Areas around Lake Stevens got between 6 and 10 inches of rain over the past 30 days, according to the National Weather Service. The heaviest rainfall was along the southern and southeastern parts of the lake. Along Vernon Road and North Lakeshore Drive, some private docks were partially underwater earlier this week while others remained just above the waterline. At Lundeen Park, water lapped over plants and a third of the way up the “No Lifeguard on Duty” sign on an empty beach. “Every year, we get people saying, ‘This is the highest we’ve seen it,’ ” public works director Mick Monken said. “But we do track the levels. And we’re definitely up there, but it’s not quite the highest we’ve seen.” It’s close, though. Monken and his staff have tracked seasonal levels of the lake since 2010 and the highest was in December 2012, when the lake measured 212.8 feet above sea level. So far this month, it has peaked at about 212.5 feet. The lake is considered to be at a high level when water hits the mark for 211.8 feet above sea level, according to an explainer from the city. The lake is up two feet from where it was in July and August. The lowest level this summer was 210.5 feet above sea level. See LAKE, Page A2
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OSO MUDSLIDE
Disaster wasn’t an outlier New research concludes the event wasn’t geologically unusual and slides of similar magnitude happen frequently. By Chris Winters Herald Writer
OSO — Two of the most pressing questions for planners and policy makers about the Oso landslide are closer to being answered. The deadly slide on March 22, 2014, cast renewed focus
on development in rainy, hilly Western Washington. It is known that we have landslides that frequently block trains and damage property. But the Oso slide, which killed 43 people and laid waste to part of the Stillaguamish River Valley with its mile-long runout, appeared to be an outlier.
The questions then, were, just how much of an outlier was Oso? And by extension, how often do big slides like Oso happen? “For our purposes we want to know if it’s thousands of years or hundreds of years,” said Alison Duvall, an assistant professor of geomorphology at the University of Washington. According to a new paper in Geology, a scientific journal published by the Geological
Society of America, the answers to those two questions are (1) not much of an outlier at all, and (2) slides of similar magnitude happen quite often. The upshot is that the Stillaguamish Valley has experienced large, long-runout landslides every few hundred years since the glacial ice sheets receded about 12,000 years ago. See OSO, Page A5
Fresh starts, clean living For women Marietta Roth has helped, there’s no cussing or drinking
ANDY BRONSON / THE HERALD
Marietta Roth (center) laughs with Deanna Espinoza, 52 (left), and Ann Merwin, 58, at her Bryant-area home Tuesday near Arlington. Over the years Roth, 87, has taken in three women who needed a place to live.
By Rikki King Herald Writer
BRYANT — When Marietta Roth needed a caregiver, she didn’t have to ask for help. It was all around her. Over the past dozen years, Marietta has taken in three women, all of whom needed a quiet place to start over. Her rules are absolute. No cussing or drinking and, at 87, she will paint walls and collect kindling for the fire as she pleases. She’s owned acreage in the Bryant area, north of Arlington, since 1963. Marietta had back surgery in October. She spent five weeks
VOL. 115, NO. 315 © 2015 THE DAILY HERALD CO.
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Bob, he let me be me. You don’t always get that in a husband. — Marietta Roth, who was married for 48 years until her husband’s death
in the hospital, after which she required around-the-clock care. Her roommates had it covered, a chance to care for the
Hello Hacker Hmmm ... that doesn’t sound like a prepubescent female: The Japanese company that owns the Hello Kitty brand says it has fixed a security leak in an online fan site that compromised the personal information of 3.3 million users (Page A7). Dear Abby. . . .D5 Horoscope . . . B3
woman who had cared for them in their times of need. Marietta was raised on her grandfather’s farm near Bozeman, Montana. In her family, once you could walk, you could work. When she was old enough to ride a horse for the mile-long trek to retrieve the cows, “Boy, that was a big day for me,” she said. The family lost the farm when she was 13. “We had to move to town. Yuck,” she said. She babysat and cleaned houses, and at 16 took a job at Woolworth’s in Bozeman. She turned 18 her junior year of high school, married two
Poor Josh Duggar: First the Ashley Madison sexsite data breach, now this. Channel-surfing the vast cultural wasteland: There’s a ton of Christmas stuff on television today, including a 24-hour “A Christmas Story” marathon on TBS (The Clicker, Page D6).
Lottery . . . . . .A2 Northwest. . . . B1
Obituaries. . . .A5 Opinion. . . . . .A9
After 20 hours, viewers, delirious from lack of sleep, will hallucinate that the leg lamp has leaped off the table and is dancing across their living room floor. Don’t know much about history: On this day in 1955, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) began Short Takes . . .D6 Sports . . . . . . . C1
weeks later and quit classes. She later left the marriage, moving with her first son to be closer to family and finding a job at another Woolworth’s in Seattle. She remarried and had two more sons. When that marriage ended, she decided she wanted her boys to grow up in the country like she did. It was the best decision she ever made for them, she said. Around the time she bought the land along Highway 9, she was being courted by Bob Roth, a farmer, plumber and electrician from North Dakota. See MARIETTA, Page A2
tracking Santa Claus’ location as he made his way from the North Pole with goodies on his sleigh (Today in History, Page D6). Historical note: Santa and his reindeer have been forced to fly their sleigh under a flag of truce ever since Obummer declared the War on Christmas in 2009. — Mark Carlson, Herald staff
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Hammering rainstorms over the past 30 days have caused Lake Stevens to climb 2 feet since summer and wash over some private docks.
EVERETT, WASHINGTON
the buzz
Water nears record high
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