Rick Wooten on the 1916 Flood

Partial Transcript: So a couple of things to clear up. Number one, it is true I am a Wooten, but I'm not a doctor. I'm plain old, Mister, and actually, Rick works a lot better for me. And I'm not the state geologist. I'm a state geologist.

Partial Transcript: But when they do come, you folks are going to be the ones, the first responders that are going to be in the middle of it. And, you know, we've in my agency, the North Carolina Geological Survey, a state agency, we've been around since 1823.

Partial Transcript: So what I'm going to try to convey is some of the things, from a scientific standpoint, that we've learned about these landslides that hopefully will help you understand where they happen when they happen, and when they do happen, what you can expect.

Partial Transcript: So, since we've been keeping track of some of the numbers, we've been tracking landslide events and trying to document them since 1990. When I came to the survey, we've identified about 547 landslides. There have been eight fatalities from landslides. That's not flooding. That's from the impact from landslides.

Partial Transcript: But the science is certainly not to the point where this hillside and this storm is going to go at 10:00. Just can't do that, because it depends on a lot of things that are always changing through time.

Partial Transcript: And those deposits, you know, they started out as big boulders and sand and rocks and they were all really hard when they failed. But they've been there long enough where the rock fragments have weathered to the point where you can break it up with your hand pressure.

Partial Transcript: So it wasn't designed to look at the stability of cuts and fills, because that takes another level of analysis that you can't do countywide here like this.

Partial Transcript: And so that those areas you can see as you get down in the valley where the oil deposits are, you can see that those green worm like paths or that's they're following the stream channel. So theoretically, if there's enough momentum in these debris flows, that's where they're going to go.

Partial Transcript: And the black crosses are where there were fatalities. And one thing that strikes me about the 1916 event is how many children died in landslides in 1916.

Partial Transcript: Those are landslide events here in western North Carolina, where we know that there have been a lot of landslides on unmodified slopes. They've also had some on modified slopes.

Partial Transcript: Yeah. Well, one thing. I would say when in doubt, keep your distance, particularly if it's at night and particularly if it's still raining.

Partial Transcript: Questions from the attendees.