Two women rescued from the devastating March 22 Washington Mudslide left everything behind -- except for one painting.
The Snohomish County Helicopter Rescue Team released footage on its YouTube page that shows the rescue made after the mudslide wiped out much of the community of Oso, Wash.
After a woman is pulled up into the helicopter, a search and rescue technician is brought up in his harness carrying a painting, which he then hands inside the chopper. "I just had to bring it with," the rescue technician reportedly said. "It was clear that it was important to her and I didn't want her to lose the last thing she had to hold on to."
“I’ve never heard anything like it before,” Robin Youngblood, one of the two women saved by helicopter, said of the mudslide in a March 26 interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “I said, ‘what the heck is that,’ and we walked over to the window. there was a wall — it took me a second to realize it was mud — and it was racing 150 miles per hour across the other side of the valley. I said ‘Oh my God,’ and it hit us.”
“I just remember thinking, OK creator if this is it, I might as well relax.” And then it was over. Her house was moved a quarter mile. She was able to pick her way through the debris, dig herself out of the mud and escape. She has no idea how she was alive.
Twenty-nine people were killed when a giant mudslide wiped out their homes on a Saturday morning in late March. Seven victims remain unidentified at the Snohomish County Medical Examiner’s Office.