Roughly 6.5 million people in the U.S. live in areas that are highly susceptible to landslides. West Coast residents — including those on the Oregon Coast and Washington’s Puget Sound — face the second-greatest exposure to landslides, after Appalachian communities in and around W. Virginia.

University of Washington researchers made these findings using the Landslide Exposure Database, an online tool they spent three years creating and recently made publicly available. The scientists say the database provides the first-ever building-level assessment of landslide susceptibility across the U.S. for nearly 130 million homes and buildings.

The database also accounts for socioeconomic data, revealing an urban-rural divide in how natural disasters can impact communities. For example, residents in rural areas who are vulnerable to landslides may have fewer financial resources to move or recover from landslides compared to urban residents living in homes perched on hillsides in affluent neighborhoods.

Joe Wartman is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Washington and the director of the Natural Hazard and Disaster Reconnaissance Facility. He joins us for more details.

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News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2026/08/13/think-out-loud-west-coast-landslides-vulnerable/