TV show recounts deadly landslide.

Byline: Mark Baker The Register-Guard

UMPQUA - Six years, four months and 23 days can make a man forget some things. But Gordon Marvin will never forget what happened here on Nov. 18, 1996.

Four crosses that surround his hillside property remind him every day.

"It's still horrendous," said Marvin, 53. "It just makes you so (dang) mad."

Timber, rocks and mud, loosened by heavy rains that day, came tumbling down an 80-degree slope above his family's home through a 10-yard swath of hillside cut by a private logging operation. His neighbors, Rick and Sue Moon, and his wife, Sharon, were killed when the Moons' home, a few hundred yards above the Marvins', was crushed by the landslide. Another neighbor, Ann Maxwell, who was walking up the long driveway that leads to several homes above Hubbard Creek Road, also was killed. All four were in their 40s.

Today at 5 p.m., the Weather Channel will air an interview with Marvin about the tragedy. The hourlong program is titled "The World's Worst Weather" and includes footage of hurricanes, tornadoes, avalanches, blizzards, sandstorms, floods and anything else Mother Nature's fury can toss at mankind.

Marvin, a project manager for a Roseburg construction company, and several neighbors filed a $13.1 million wrongful death lawsuit against the logger, Don Whitaker Logging & Hauling of Roseburg, and Champion International, the landowner. They settled out of court for about a tenth of the amount, said Marvin, who does not hide the bitterness he still feels.

"The money issue is kind of a bogus issue," he said. "Money's not going to take away the pain or the parts of your life that are gone forever." Marvin believed that the logging company and the landowner should have been prosecuted for manslaughter, but the Douglas County district attorney felt otherwise, he said.

The rains of that November caused flooding throughout the state, and the disaster here led to new state laws that determine how the Oregon Department of Forestry manages timber harvests. Before the tragedy, the department did not have the authority to regulate hazards threatening public safety, said Rod Nichols, a state forestry department spokesman. Today, state law allows the department to forbid logging on sites deemed unsafe, he said.

According to the program, flooding and its aftermath kill more people and are costlier than any other natural disasters.

Also interviewed for the program was Arnold Ryder, 76, of Myrtle Creek. Ryder was delivering newspapers in his car on Hubbard Creek Road, just like he did every day, when the landslide happened.

His white 1992 Ford Tempo got stuck in the mud and Marvin and Rick Moon tried to help him pull it out. While Ryder went to call for a tow truck, Marvin and Moon went back up the long gravel driveway to the Moon residence to try to fix an overflowing culvert. Marvin eventually went back to his house to change his wet socks, and work on his own overflowing culvert, he said.

About 5 p.m., the earth started to shake.

"I saw a wall of water and trees coming," Ryder said in a telephone interview. As he describes on the program, Ryder said he next felt "the sensation of going down a garbage disposal. I mean it was a whirling, swirling, swirling sensation," he says on the program. "That's when everything stopped. I was buried in mud and the only thing sticking out was my head. My mouth was jam-packed with mud."

And his car was gone, lost in a sea of debris, as can be seen on the show.

Marvin, whose sons, Skylar and Shaun, then 11 and 8, were on their way home from school, watched the 120-foot-tall Douglas fir trees in front of his home fly by. "It was like a magic show," he said. "Everything just went whoosh."

The Moons' daughter, Rachael, then 16, escaped by running out of the home, Marvin said.

Today, the spot where the Moons' home once sat is still littered with remnants: A dented oven with the brand name "Home Comfort" written in cursive, a twisted washing machine, a piano keyboard, an iron and the tin roof of a wood shed that once sat next to the two-story, octagonal-shaped wood-frame home - its pieces fanned out like a deck of playing cards against the hillside.

A wooden memorial lists the names of the four victims, and includes small framed photographs of each.

A string of hot-tub-sized boulders lay in a string below the site. All came tumbling down with the landslide, Marvin said. He hired an excavator to position them so they would act like a sieve if another landslide ever comes again and makes another home look "just like a bomb blew it up," he said.

CAPTION(S):

Gordon Marvin visits the site where the bodies of his wife, Sharon Marvin, and neighbor Ann Maxwell were found after a debris torrent from the mountain above hit the area in 1996. Two other people, Rick and Sue Moon, also were killed. "It's still horrendous," Marvin says. Landslide: Neighbors settled out of court with logger, landowner Continued from Page C1 NATURE'S FURY The Weather Channel will air "The World's Worst Weather" today at 5 p.m. on Channel 50 (upgraded Comcast Cable) or Channel 19 (nonupgraded cable).