The City and Borough of Wrangell has suspended the search for 12-year-old Derek Heller, who is the only person left missing from the Nov. 20 disastrous landslide.
This follows 15 days of searching and clearing landslide debris by the Wrangell Volunteer Fire Department, numerous support volunteers, K9 scent dogs and local equipment operators.
Kale Casey, spokesperson for the Alaska Interagency Incident Management Team has been at the landslide site with responders and says the teams all came together with one mission.
“The search has been absolutely monumental,” he said. “It’s a very dangerous slide path, they mitigated a lot of risks, they operated incredibly safely for days, 15 days in a row, day and night, a lot of courage being there in inclement weather and obviously very emotional.”
Searchers found the remains of five people: 65-year-old Otto Florshutz and the Heller family – 44-year-old Timothy, 36-year-old Beth, 16-year-old Mara and 11-year-old Kara. They also found one survivor – 63-year-old Christina Florshutz, Otto’s wife.
The slide was 4,000 feet long and the bottom of it stretched into the water which complicated the search. The slide around the destroyed homes was about 450 feet wide. Casey says searchers had to work through “endless amounts of clay and slippery surfaces” and the responders reached all accessible areas above and into the intertidal zone.
“They want to find Derek and bring closure to the family,” Casey said. “When you exhaust all your search areas, when you circle back and check them again, when you’re doing the kind of work they’re doing, there is a point where your search areas have been searched and that’s where they got to last night.”
A press release from the City and Borough of Wrangell says Search and Rescue volunteers and a K9 scent detection team will be available if there are any new leads or evidence in specific areas in the future.
