Crews Work To Install New Equipment On Slide Area

State and local officials continue to monitor the slow moving Rattlesnake Ridge slide and beginning next week crews will start drilling holes into the slope to install more monitoring equipment. Horace Ward with the Yakima Valley Office of Emergency Management says they want people to know why crews will be working in the slide area from next week until early January. "There will be drilling equipment a drilling rig up on the landslide. So people are going to see it and they may wonder what's going on."
Columbia Asphalt is directing the work under a contract with the State Department of Natural Resources. Ward say the equipment to be installed in the drill holes will give geologists more information as they continue to monitor the slide. He says the slide is slowing down and continues to decrease in movement everyday. It was first detected in 2017.