Jamie Roberts and her husband felt lucky when they found an A-frame cabin on forest-draped Wrangell Island in southeast Alaska, where they could settle on a few acres and have some chickens.
A stretch of highway a few miles north, the only road into town, did make her nervous; there, waterfalls cascaded and rocks tumbled from towering bluffs on stormy days. But she always felt safe at her home of more than 20 years.
That all changed the night of Nov. 20 after heavy rains, when a torrent of earth and trees rushed down a mountainside next to their home, cutting a swath to the sea. It killed six people, including a family of five; demolished two houses; and buried the highway.
The landslide lacked the scale of one that erased a neighborhood in Oso, Washington, 10 years ago. But it, too, left a community unmoored, wondering whether the dramatic landscape above was as permanent as it once seemed.