Summary: The site near Roseburg where four persons died was in an area cited as potentially dangerous

The state can't prohibit logging on private land where there is the danger of a mudslide, such as the one that killed four people near Roseburg

A state forester noted 10 years ago that steep slopes and unstable soils in a proposed clear-cut posed a risk to a home that was destroyed last week in a mudslide that killed four people.

Despite the concerns, Champion International logged the timber sale above Rock Creek 12 miles northwest of Roseburg in 1987. Champion later sold the logged over land to Seneca Jones Timber Co. of Eugene.

On Nov. 18, after heavy rains, the slide roared out of the Rock Hubbard clear-cut and slammed into the home of Rick and Susan Moon, killing the couple, neighbor, Sharon Marvin, and friend, Ann Maxwell, who was walking up the road to join them. A newspaper delivery man was injured, while the Moons' two children escaped uninjured.

Handwritten notes in a file kept at the Forestry Department's Douglas District office in Roseburg and obtained by The Associated Press pointed out that three homes were located "in an area a debris slide could reach."

An entry dated Oct. 27, 1986, notes the Moon home was located on the edge of Rock Creek, adding in parentheses, "High potential for slide damage."

District Forester Steve Truesdell acknowledged that the Department of Forestry recognized the danger of landslides in the logging units but had no power to prohibit the logging.

"We enforce the forest practices rules, which have to do with building roads to standards, logging and harvesting to standards, disposing of slash," said Truesdell. "Just because a risk is identified -- there is risk anywhere.

"It's all private land. We don't have the authority to not allow activities. In most cases there is no problem."

Carl Roberts, the forester who wrote the notes, said he never considered them a specific warning that the Moons' home could be destroyed.

Truesdell added that the Moon house was built on an alluvial fan left by slides in the past and the risk of a slide remained whether there had been any logging or not.

A nearby slide during the same storm came out of old-growth timber on U.S. Bureau of Land Management property, Roberts said.

"There's always a potential for something sliding out," Roberts said. "To sit here and say, `It's going to happen,' I can't foresee the future like that."

Francis Eatherington of Umpqua Watersheds, an environmental group, said the department's lack of authority to stop logging on steep slopes where there is danger of mudslides points out the need to change the Oregon Forest Practices Act, which regulates logging on private land.

"They betrayed the trust of those people down there," she said. "We need to stop giving permits right now and look at the process of the Oregon State Forest Practices Act.

"We definitely need to go examine clear-cuts of the 1980s and early 1990s to see if anything else is going to fail this winter or in the near future."

Sharon Marvin's husband, Gordon, has hired a lawyer who is investigating.

"Obviously, the primary interest is trying to analyze it so these tragedies don't occur to others," said attorney Art Johnson. "A related issue is obviously fair compensation to those families if this resulted from somebody's fault or negligence."

The notes by Roberts add that Jeff Orr, who shared ownership of 160 acres with the Moons and Marvins and lived at the mouth of Rock Creek, had gone to the Department of Forestry to express his concern that a clear-cut could cause a slide, and these concerns were passed on to Champion.

"Jeff was not opposed to logging but did not want any damages," the notes said.

Roberts also noted that he talked to Rick Moon. "He does not oppose the logging but is concerned about any slide that may block the creek and flood out at a later date."

Champion International owned the land when it was logged in 1987 and 1988 and sold it in 1992 along with all its Oregon timber. According to the file, Champion followed the department's recommendations to fully suspend the logs in the air in what is called a skyline yarding system.

Truesdell said that recommendation was prompted by the department's recognition of the potential for slides.

"I don't think we know whether the cut had an effect," said Champion spokesman Bob Turner from company headquarters in Stamford, Conn. "Clearly if there were concerns raised by the state, we assume those concerns were reflected in the guidelines they suggested and we followed."

Truesdell said he and others from the Department of Forestry went to the origin of the mudslide Monday and saw that it came out of the bed of Rock Creek within the boundaries of the 168-acre clear-cut. There was no evidence that soil disturbance had channeled extra water into the creek or that a road on the other side of a ridge had contributed to the problem.