The city of Kelso did its best to repair roads and moved utilities above ground so residents could stay in their homes for as long as possible. Movement of the upper slope gradually increased into a continuous headscarp approximately long with a vertical separation of by June 1998. The landslide is about 3,000 feet (915 m) wide by 1,500 feet (457 m) in length had reached a height of . In June 1998, 54 homes were located within the active limits of the landslide and during the winter of 1998–99, 3 more homes were swallowed up. The maximum slide movement in 1998 was about 6 to 12 inches (15 to 30 cm) per day  On October 16, 1998, President Bill Clinton and the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a Presidential Disaster Declaration. Some assistance was then given to the affected residents. The city of Kelso condemned 137 homes and disbursed roughly $4.7 million in FEMA funds to those evacuated. The homes and infrastructure suffered more than $70 million of damage. FEMA and the state of Washington offered to buy out 127 homeowners at 30 cents on the dollar. This was the second largest landslide disaster in US history involving homes on a landslide. The largest was the 1956 Portuguese Bend landslide in Palos Verdes Hills of Southern California, when 130 homes were destroyed. All but eleven homeowners took the offer accepting the risk that the upper ridge of possibly reactivating. The federal government has removed all of the purchased homes. In 2000, in response to the Aldercrest–Banyon and other recent damaging landslides in Cowlitz County, the Washington Division of Geology and Earth Resources began a geographic information systems-based landslide inventory and slope stability mapping project. In total, 260 square miles (680 sq km) of urbanizing lands in Cowlitz County between the Toutle River and the Lewis and Wahkiakum County lines have been mapped for all landslides, regardless of age.