12th Annual Finalist – Environment. According to the NC Geological Survey, some 300 landslides were documented in western NC during the record rainfall in the first 7 months of 2013. And the vast majority of those slope failures had involved slopes altered by development and mobilized into damaging debris flows. In large part due to steep slope development, Watauga County leads the state in the number of known slides. I learned only after our slide that our home was already depicted in a high-risk landslide site mapped by State Geologists seeking to identify such likely hazards before their funding was cut. In this case, the final trigger was likely the blockage of drainage ditches up above, that redirected the stormwater over a weakened slope. Photograph Copyright Catherine Hopkins, All Rights Reserved.