Emergency responders were primarily focused on a landslide near Kramer Avenue, just a couple of miles outside of Sitka, Schmitt said.
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Rescue teams are actively searching for four people who went missing after three seperate landslides hit a town in southeast Alaska.
“It has been raining like hell for the last 24 hours”, Schmitt said.
Emergency responders have said only that the missing people are believed to be workers at a residential construction site. A sinkhole was also spotted in the town.
Four people in the Alaska community of Sitka are missing after rains triggered a series of landslides Tuesday, authorities said.
Sara Peterson, the city’s public information officer, said three landslides struck the coastal city of about 9,000 people.
Some homes in town have been flooded and there were reports of residents not being able to reach their homes or leave their neighborhood, said Jeremy Zidek, a spokesman for the state Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
The landslides began at around 10 a.m. Tuesday, after heavy rains in the area, a city spokesperson told NBC station KTTU.
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Heavy rain was blamed for a major landslide in September near the town that wiped out hundreds of thousands of dollars in watershed-restoration projects.
