Mudslide calamities like the recent one near Seattle are uncommon but not unique. About 1750, several Pacific coastal houses in Ozette, a Native American fishing village on the Olympic Peninsula, were buried by a sudden mudslide.
From ~400 AD through the early 1900s, Ozette was the base of whaling operations by people known as the Makah. It wasn’t until coastal erosion in the 1970s exposed the ruins that the village became visible again.
When the Makah people found the ruins of Ozette eroding out on their beaches, they asked archaeologists at WSU to help out. The project was one of the first joint Native American and academic projects ever conducted in American archaeology.