Drone video shows a deepening crack in the Yakima’s Rattlesnake Ridge in Washington

A new drone video shows a slow-moving landslide on Yakima’s Rattlesnake Ridge. According to the Washington Department of Natural Resources to slide spans roughly 20 acres of land moving at a speed of 1 and 1/2 feet per week. The landslide slowly travels South near Union Gap which is about 3 miles south of Yakima. Geologists use a drone to closely monitor the event by stitching together drone images to create a 3D model of the slide’s progress.

What do we think will happen and when?

Mike Tonkel with the Washington Geological Survey says:

“Over time, we can take these various images that have been taken at different points in time and we can follow the progress of what’s going on with the land and surface features, so we can watch how fractures and gaps grow.” Tonkel continues, “We can also watch which direction the land is moving and then make calculations based off that – for volume, distance, speed.”

According to KGW8 , the slide is moving toward the Columbia Asphalt quarry, which operations have been halted during the inspection of the landslide.

The Washington Department of Natural Resources had created an event report for Rattlesnake Ridge in which it states:

“What do we think will happen and when? The honest answer is no one knows for certain. There are a number of possibilities. The most likely scenario is that the landslide will continue to slowly move to the south, where the landslide mass will fall into the quarry pit and accumulate.”

Originally Washington State has predicted that a full slide would occur by March this year however since that did not happen the state has since dropped their prediction for a collapse.

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