Snohomish County, Wash. — There were mixed messages on Monday about who was in charge of the disaster response to the Oso landslide. Snohomish County Emergency Management Director John Pennington told KIRO 7 he was, but a spokeswoman for the incident command said the top spot had switched to Type 2 Incident Commander Larry Nickey.
Pennington was last seen publicly on Thursday at a news briefing. On Monday, he told KIRO 7 he has since been working behind the scenes in Darrington, coordinating the future disaster response. Gov. Jay Inslee said state and federal officials are assisting the county.
"This is a combined incident response team led by local officials in Snohomish County," Inslee said.
Incident spokeswoman Cynthia Bork told KIRO 7 that Nickey, who works for the National Park Service at Olympic National Park, has been in charge since 6:00 a.m. Sunday, when the landslide response was upgraded to what's called a Type 2 incident, similar to a wildfire. She said Pennington is the one who signed off on this change.
Neither Pennington nor Nickey appeared at a news briefing Monday evening.
KIRO
:quality(70)/d1hfln2sfez66z.cloudfront.net/04-25-2024/t_d797b1eccd0344e7b153ebdab1b0050c_name_file_960x540_1200_v3_1_.jpg)
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/cmg/R6RG2PCB2ZHJ3L3E6UDSUL2Z5U.jpeg)
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/cmg/V4BXSALJL5CAFEJ5G6NIVRZCTA.png)
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/cmg/C5LAWQBDOND5BO255IYBMB4AGQ.jpg)
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/cmg/RTYBJPJEMJHJDL4J7XLD4PBESQ.jpg)