Residents say something must be done to stop landslides

LOGAN — On Canyon Road, Clyde Anderson waters his lawn with irrigation water from the canal that runs along the hill above his home and gardens in the silt and sand left by a landslide that came down the hillside nearly 100 years ago.

The steep bluff that borders the north end of Logan's "Island" neighborhood has a history of slides, officials said. Just 200 yards away from a slide that flooded homes in 2005, the latest landslide roared down the hill Saturday, destroying a home and burying a mother and her two children.

And while investigators have yet to figure out exactly what triggered the deadly slide, residents along Canyon Road said something has to be done to prevent another.

"They'll think this is the last one forever," said Ray Pehrson, who remembers four major slides during a lifetime on Canyon Road. "But it's going to happen again."

Francis Ashland, a senior geologist at the Utah Geological Survey, believes a landslide occurred below the concrete canal Saturday, causing the waterway to collapse and send a fatal rush of mud and water down the embankment.

As crews continued to search Monday for the bodies of Jacqueline Leavey, 43, and her two children, Victor Alanis, 14, and Abbey Alanis, 12, the site remained "relatively hazardous" and water continued to flow down the hill, Ashland said.

Early signs pointed to water as the culprit, but the source remained unknown.

State geologists have seen "historical land sliding on this bluff going back to the 1930s," Ashland said.

He called a July slide "generally rare" but noted that it came after an exceptionally wet June, one in which Logan saw 3.4 inches of rain — about 250 percent of normal.

The water could have also come from sprinklers at Utah State University and homes atop the bluff as people watered their lawns during the early July heat.

It might have also leaked from the concrete canal, Ashland said.

"The canal is no longer there so we can't assess the condition of the canal prior to the landslide," he said. "We don't know what contribution the canal had. … There are some damage zones along it, both to the east and the west of the landslide. So it's possible some water was leaking through the lining of the canal, either out of the seams or through the cracks."