Governor signs Medal of Valor bill for Oso rescuers

OLYMPIA (AP) — Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill Monday morning to allow awarding the Medal of Valor to a group of recipients rather than a single person, clearing the way to give one of Washington’s highest honors to several communities for rescue efforts after last year’s deadly Oso mudslide.

Later this month, Inslee plans to award the medal collectively to Oso, Darrington and Arlington, and the Sauk-Suiattle Tribe, for their responses to the March 2014 mudslide that killed 43 people. Previously, the Medal of Valor could only be given to one recipient for taking action at personal risk to save one or more lives.

“We all know the heartbreak from the landslide in Oso,” Inslee said before he signed the bill. “It was so deep in our state, and now this bill will allow the honoring of many heroic individuals and groups who at great personal peril responded to the tragedy.”

The bill, which passed the Senate and House without opposition, is the second Inslee has signed into law this session.

Sen. Kirk Pearson, R-Monroe, who sponsored the measure in the Senate, said the bill signing and the upcoming anniversary of the landslide have filled him with mixed emotions — sadness in remembering the tragedy, and pride in the way surrounding communities in the Stillaguamish Valley worked in response to the mudslide.

The medal, he said, is deserved by many.

“I wish we could give it to everybody in the Stilly Valley,” Pearson said after Inslee signed the bill. “When our state honors those, it highlights and shows that we do care.”

The ceremony to award the medals is scheduled for March 18, four days short of the anniversary of the mudslide, at a joint session of the Washington state Senate and House.