This story was originally published on LincolnChronicle.org and is used with permission.
Four Lincoln County property owners whose houses were damaged or destroyed by a massive landslide on Oregon Highway 229 north of Siletz in December are suing the Northwest timber giant they say is to blame.
Their lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Eugene, seeks unspecified monetary damages “to be determined at trial.”
It represents the first legal fallout from the Dec. 12 landslide that buried a 1,000-foot-long section of Highway 229 between Kernville and Siletz beneath tons of mud, rock, trees and other debris.
And it alleges that Seattle-based Weyerhaeuser, which acquired the acreage on which the landslide occurred, knew of the instability, but failed to alert nearby landowners about the dangers.
“For six years, Weyerhaeuser watched the clear-cut slope above the Siletz Highway slump, crack, and creep toward Plaintiffs’ homes,” according to the 10-page filing. “It never investigated, never stabilized, never warned.”
The closest the company came to informing residents of the imminent danger of a slide, according to the lawsuit, came one month before the incident, “when its representatives asked the residents below to watch the hillside for it.”
“Weeks later,” it continued, “before dawn on Dec. 12, 2025, the hillside collapsed burying a thousand feet of state highway, destroying or ruining plaintiffs’ homes, and pushing mud, rock, and shattered houses into the Siletz River. This action seeks to hold Weyerhaeuser responsible – not for harvesting timber, but for watching a known hazard grow above its neighbors’ homes for six years and doing nothing to stop it.”
The plaintiffs, Joseph Jenks, David Clark, Judith Ann Clark and Timothy Hamblin, all own land near milepost 14 along that part of the highway, according to the lawsuit.
The slide occurred on slopes high above their houses, on land that had been clear-cut between 2009 and 2011 by the prior landowner, Plum Creek Timberlands, the suit alleges. Weyerhaeuser acquired the land when it merged with Plum Creek in 2016.
The suit asserts both that Weyerhaeuser should have known that clear cutting can weaken steep slopes, and that aerial photographs of the steep hillside, taken in 2019, showed clear evidence that some sliding had already started to take place.
“Weyerhaeuser knew of the instability,” according to the lawsuit. “Its personnel managed, inspected, and worked the hillside and the surrounding timberlands. It maintained and used roads on and around the slope, and it review aerial imagery of its own lands in the course of managing them. The evidence available to Weyerhaeuser was not subtle. The ground above an occupied neighborhood and a state highway was moving.”
The company, for most than six years, failed to take necessary preventative actions, according to the suit. Instead, the company asked residents to “keep on eye on the hillside” and asked them to report anything “unusual.”
“They did not warn anyone that the slope above the residents’ homes was failing, did not disclose what Weyerhaeuser knew about the hillside’s condition, and did not tell anyone to prepare or to leave,” it went on.
The suit, filed by Salem attorney Will Riddell, seeks both economic and noneconomic damages all “to be proven at trial.” It also seeks plaintiffs’ costs and “such other and further relief as the Court deems just and equitable.” Homeowners not only lost access to their homes and land, the lawsuit said, but continue to incur displacement, housing and related expenses, and their property values have suffered.
Weyerhaeuser declined to respond to the lawsuit. Kyleigh Gill, the company’s public relations manager for Oregon and Montana, wrote in a brief statement to the Lincoln Chronicle that “We are unable to comment on pending litigation.”
The highway, meanwhile, remains closed, as state engineers and contractors continue efforts to monitor the landslide, which is still moving. Workers are hauling heavy machinery into the area, which will help place the subsurface monitors considered critical toward designing the highway repair.
As many as 400 vehicles a day used the highway prior to the landslide, according to state traffic data. Drivers who once needed only about 20 minutes to travel from U.S. Highway 101 through Kernville south to Siletz must now take a detour that more than triples that time.
Part of the ongoing work involves efforts by state highway engineers to explore what it might take to build a temporary road near the existing – and still buried – highway. Any temporary road is expected to be no larger than two lanes and wide enough only for cars, school buses and garbage trucks.
