LYNNWOOD — Property recovered from the Oso mudslide this spring included victims’ personal technology such as flash drives, laptops, camera memory cards and tablets.
Many of those items were crushed, covered in mud or soaked with water.
A group of Edmonds Community College students volunteered hundreds of hours to recover more than 100,000 digital files, including documents and photos, from the devices.
They were led by instructor Steve Hailey in the Information Security and Digital Forensics Program.
The idea came from student Rob Matthews, 41, of Arlington. Matthews grew up in north Snohomish County and is part of the long-term recovery efforts in Oso, he said.
He was on break from classes around the time of the March 22 slide. He was trying to think of ways he could help. The students and EdCC leaders, including Dean Elliot Stern, made it happen.
Many of the items were damaged beyond repair, Matthews said.
“Just a small speck of dust can damage the internal (contents) of a hard drive,” he said.
Program graduate Leslie Berntson and student Kyle Derrick spent hours painstakingly cleaning items before the team could attempt the data recovery. Then the team would use machinery — in a surgically sterile work station at the college — to read the devices, extract data and make a digital copy.
They had to be careful. Even a fingerprint in the wrong place on a hard drive can ruin the chances of recovery, said Derrick, who also is a teaching assistant.
Everything they recovered was kept in a locked safe, Matthews said. He personally ferried items between campus and the property reunification center in Everett.
Whenever possible, the EdCC team avoided looking at the victims’ photos and files, even as they searched for clues to identify the owners of particular devices. They wanted to be helpful and also respectful.
Local companies, including the Lynnwood Costco, donated new devices to hold the recovered files when they were given back to victims.
Others on the EdCC team, including students and staff, were Donna Robeck, Braden Heil, David Angell, Quincy Powell and Richard Leickly.
Hailey estimates the team worked as many as 600 hours altogether. A professional data-recovery company likely would have charged up to $70,000 for the same scope of work, he said.
“Nobody is doing this for a grade,” Matthews said. “We put a lot of hours and time and a lot of heart into it. Just giving back something these people have lost is rewarding.”
Rikki King: 425-339-3449; rking@heraldnet.com.
Edmonds Community College plans a free digital forensics class from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday on campus. Anyone can enroll. The class will cover topics including recovering deleted or lost data from damaged hard drives. More info: infosec.edcc.edu/freetraining.html.
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