Finalist: Staff of The Seattle Times

By Seattle Times staff

Western Washington residents along the Skagit and Snohomish rivers could face “catastrophic” and life-threatening flooding Thursday from the week’s heavy rainfall, National Weather Service officials said.

Officials ordered evacuations for parts of Orting in Pierce County, Ebey Island in Snohomish County and Skagit County in the 100-year floodplain.

An estimated 100,000 Washington residents could face evacuation orders because of rapidly rising floodwaters, Gov. Bob Ferguson’s office said Wednesday afternoon.

Ferguson declared a state of emergency and said he would request federal funding to assist in flood recovery. He thanked first responders and issued a plea for the public: “If you receive an evacuation order, please, please follow that order. It is critical for your safety.”

“Catastrophic” flooding is expected from Mount Vernon through Everett and into areas east of Redmond, the National Weather Service said. Catastrophic flooding could bring significant risk to life and property, with a high risk of levees being topped and landslides expected in steep terrain, according to the weather service. It could also mean record floods that destroy roads and structures and require evacuations or rescues of people and property, National Weather Service meteorologist Steve Reedy said.

“I’ve been working here at the Seattle office for 12 years and I have never seen anything like this,” Reedy said.

As the Puyallup River reached a record water level, Central Pierce Fire and Rescue issued a “GO NOW” evacuation notice Wednesday for Orting residents living in the areas of Williams Boulevard Northwest, Mellinger Avenue Northwest and Stone Street Northwest. A “BE SET” evacuation notice, in which residents are urged to prepare to leave, was issued for those living in the area of High Cedars Golf Course south of the Puyallup River.

The Puyallup River set a record high water level at 12.3 feet about 6 a.m. Wednesday, more than 2 feet above what’s considered a serious flood there.

Residents rescued from flooding

Crews have rescued dozens of people throughout Western Washington who were stuck in cars or their homes while floodwaters rose.

Three people whose home flooded near the Middle Fork Snoqualmie River were rescued by Eastside Fire and Rescue crews Wednesday morning. The three adults, who had limited mobility, were rescued with their dog around 10 a.m., according the fire department.

Twelve people and their dogs and cats were rescued from a trailer park off Highway 12 in Randle, next to the Cowlitz River, around 11:30 p.m. Monday, said Lewis County sheriff’s office Chief Rick Van Wyck. Floodwaters were rising around the park and the residents, from six to eight different units, couldn’t get out.

First responders rescued a couple from another trailer park off Highway 131, near downtown Randle around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, also from rising floodwaters around their home, Van Wyck said. 

Residents in both trailer parks were advised to leave beforehand by first responders who knocked on doors and called park management, but they chose not to evacuate, Van Wyck said. None were injured in the flooding and they were taken to the Packwood Community Center or set up in accommodations elsewhere.

“We’re expecting far worse tonight,” Van Wyck said Wednesday. “That was just a taste of what’s to come.”

Fire crews saved a man and his cat from his car in Shelton along Skokomish Valley Road at 3:45 a.m. Tuesday on the Olympic Peninsula, the West Mason fire department said. The fire department said it “repeatedly had to rescue people from this stretch of road” and asked drivers to obey closure signs “to keep you and the firefighters safe.” Minutes later, across Puget Sound, fire crews rescued a woman in Auburn whose car was swept into a ditch on a road that hadn’t been closed yet, said Mountain View Fire District Chief Dawn Judkins. 

National Guard deployed

The National Guard deployed 100 members to communities to assist in the flood recovery and planned to deploy more than 300 by the end of Thursday. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it was sending response teams to Washington and had activated its regional response coordination center.  

A mudslide blocked the eastbound lanes of Interstate 90 west of North Bend. Three vehicles were caught in the slide Wednesday afternoon, but all occupants were able to exit and weren’t injured, according to the Washington State Patrol.

Multiple stretches of Highway 2 were closed Wednesday. Twenty-eight miles of the highway from Scenic near Stevens Pass to Coles Corner west of Leavenworth were closed because of rocks, trees and mud in the roadway. Both directions of Highway 2 were closed for 14 miles near Index.

Animals evacuated, too

An exodus of animals, including cats, dogs and horses, were evacuated across Snohomish County because of flooding.

Bounty, a freckled, brown boxer-Staffordshire mix, was one of 62 dogs taken home by people who volunteered to temporarily foster one of the Everett Animal Shelter’s pets until this week’s storm had passed. Her stout frame waddled from side to side as she padded toward the shelter’s lobby, her tail wagging, snout sniffing and nails clacking cheerfully on the hallway tile.

The shelter, across the street from the swelling Snohomish River and about 33 miles northeast of Seattle, is at risk of flooding if water levels get too high.

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By Seattle Times staff

Tens of thousands of people evacuated their homes as rivers throughout the Puget Sound region rose to historic levels Thursday, and scores more Washingtonians needed rescue or entire communities were cut off.

The National Weather Service warned of catastrophic, life-threatening flooding continuing Friday, but residents will get a bit of a reprieve from heavy rain. Rainfall totals are forecast for far less than earlier this week — the Seattle area saw 1 to 4 inches of rain, and some spots in the Puget Sound region had more than a foot over the past three days — but that won’t alleviate the flooding.

“The rain is going to be lessened, but everything is going to be flowing downstream from what’s fallen over the past couple of days,” weather service meteorologist Johnny Burg said.

In areas around Puget Sound, water seeped and rushed into homes, and swallowed cars of drivers who disregarded warnings to avoid flooded roadways. A Whatcom County man called the flooding on his reservation “pretty biblical,” while a hardware-store employee in Duvall called her city an island because it was essentially cut off by flooding.

Lawmakers seek aid for dire situation

The entire Washington congressional delegation, which includes eight Democrats and two Republicans, urged President Donald Trump to approve an expedited emergency declaration for historic flooding in Western Washington this week.

Gov. Bob Ferguson made the request earlier this week after declaring a state of emergency. Ferguson also called in National Guard members, who were in Skagit County on Thursday, filling sandbags to support flood mitigation efforts.

Skagit County officials ordered “GO NOW” evacuations for the entire 100-year flood plain of the Skagit River valley. About 100,000 people were expected to be evacuated statewide, Ferguson’s office said. A flash flood watch remains in effect through late Friday for a potential levee failure of the Skagit River below Sedro-Woolley.

Dozens of people slept in emergency shelters overnight across the state Wednesday night into Thursday because of major flooding. Fifty-one people were at the Bethany Covenant Church in Mount Vernon, 28 were at the Evergreen State Fairgrounds in Monroe and 10 slept at the Packwood Community Hall in Randle.

Many more people than that have been coming in Thursday to sleep for a few hours and call a family member to be picked up, said Kristin Goodwillie, a spokesperson for American Red Cross Northwest Region. Goodwillie was stationed at the Mount Vernon shelter, where she said there was overflow capacity, pets were welcome, and there was no timetable for closing any of the shelters.

“We will be open as long as there is a need,” Goodwillie said.

Rescues amid record flooding

Rivers surpassed or neared record-breaking levels. The Snohomish River at Snohomish surged Thursday morning to its highest water level in 35 years. The river reached a preliminary 33.57 feet at 6 a.m., according to the weather service, just slightly over the record 33.5 feet set in November 1990. The river crested at 34.1 feet Thursday afternoon.

Crews rescued dozens of people near the Snohomish River as it swelled Thursday.

Near Monroe, Sue and Bill Elliott stepped out of the yellow canoe and onto Elliott Road with relief, their three dogs hopping onto land behind them.

“Thank you,” Sue Elliott said, clasping the hand of Ryan Lundquist, Snohomish Regional Fire and Rescue’s operations chief. “It hasn’t been like this since 1990.”

The couple started walking uphill with their pets before Sue Elliott looked back over her shoulder at Lundquist. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.

Rescue personnel wearing wet suits, helmets and life preservers picked up the couple and their pets about noon Thursday, after their trailer started disappearing under the water. The agency had rescued 26 people, including the Elliotts, since 8 a.m. Thursday, and expects to save more as water continues flowing downhill from nearby mountains, Lundquist said.

Not the typical ‘annual storm’

Some who live near the Snohomish River have weathered floods before and feel confident they’ll remain safe in their homes even as neighbors evacuate, Lundquist said. But this week’s weather was not a typical “annual storm.”

“Most people know what’s coming — they just didn’t know it was going to be like this,” Lundquist said. “So many wait it out because they’ve done it before, but then water comes faster and higher than they thought.

Near the Stillaguamish River in unincorporated Stanwood, Megan Dascher-Watkins felt that she and her family had “dodged a bullet,” even though her home, barn and workshop were surrounded with floodwater.

Dascher-Watkins, 56, and her family of five have been living there since 2003, and have learned their fair share of lessons from years of “historic floods” on the Stillaguamish River. Their property flooded the day after they closed on the home. Then again in 2010. Then again in 2023. And then again Thursday morning.

Water poured into the back of their property and swallowed a portion of their 4-foot-tall fence until only the tip of a post was visible. A crane stood on top. The family adapted each time it flooded. Dascher-Watkins’ husband built shelving to save their belongings and an elevated storage place where he could lift more with a forklift. They secured their septic tank and elevated the electrical controls above the ground. This time, they’d made it relatively unscathed. 

Roselyn Tadlock arrived at the North Bend Library hoping to find a place with Wi-Fi, but found it closed Thursday morning because of weather conditions. She and her husband, who for about 35 years have lived in Wilderness Rim, just north of Rattlesnake Lake, lost power Wednesday.

They haven’t had any flooding in their home, but about 20 houses in their neighborhood have, she said, as water gushed down a hillside from the south. Flooding has occurred in the past in the area, she said, “but not like this.”

“I was surprised how many homes were flooded there because I thought, we’re up in the hill, no way it’s going to flood, but unfortunately a lot of people’s (homes) did,” Tadlock said.

‘We’re an island’

Some communities were cut off by flooded roads and mudslides that blocked highways, including portions of Interstate 90, Thursday morning.

Access to or from Duvall was cut off by rising floodwaters from the nearby Snoqualmie River. Duvall Mayor Amy Ockerlander issued an emergency declaration Thursday morning to expedite flood response efforts.

“We’re an island,” resident Laura Loresch said Thursday afternoon.

At Duvall Hardware and Garden, a steady number of residents were coming in for supplies, said Loresch, the store’s inventory control manager. This week’s flooding was the highest she’s seen in her 30 years living in the Snoqualmie Valley, she said, but everyone was doing OK.

“The attitude is, ‘It is what it is,’” she said. “We just live with it.”

When Anna Payne showed up Thursday morning to work at the Safeway in Duvall, the produce section manager didn’t expect she would be sleeping in her car that night. But then, all roads in and out of Duvall flooded. Her home is in Monroe, so her other option would be sleeping in the store.

She said the store has been busy all day, with very long lines and items running out of stock. She described it as “COVID-style busy.” Payne said it seemed like residents were preparing to remain trapped in Duvall for the long haul if need be.

Payne brought her medications and extra clothes to work just in case, and said many customers have offered blankets and pillows to her and other staff who live outside the town.

Freddie Lane, an enrolled member of Lummi Nation, has watched his people’s lands flood since his childhood on the Whatcom County reservation.

“Around the world, Indigenous people have their flood stories,” he said. “These great floods and whatnot — they’re not new to our people.”

But he described the current floods as “pretty biblical.” He knows a number of Lhaq’temish, or Lummi people, who reside in the flood zones. The waters also devastate local tribal casinos, Lane said in a phone interview Thursday, as employees are restricted from reaching their workplaces.

In Chelan County, torrential rains and high winds caused heavy flooding and power outages.

As of 4 p.m. Thursday, sections of Highway 2 were closed between Leavenworth, in eastern Chelan County, and Skykomish in King County, because of slides and other obstructions, according to the state Department of Transportation website.

On Thursday morning the upper Wenatchee River hit “major flood stage” near Leavenworth, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, as up to a foot and more of rainfall soaked parts of the Cascade Mountains.

By Thursday afternoon, residents and emergency crews were still assessing the damage.

Drone photos shared on Facebook showed much of the upper Wenatchee Valley inundated with waters from the Wenatchee River. The Wenatchee World reported that many businesses in and around Leavenworth had been swamped. The American Red Cross was reportedly setting up a shelter in Cashmere for residents who had been displaced by flooding or had been unable to reach their homes, the World reported.

Seattle Times staff reporters Kai Uyehara, Catalina Gaitán, Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks, Paige Cornwell, Greg Kim, Paul Roberts and Megan Ulu-Lani Boyanton contributed to this report.

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By Greg Kim, Conrad Swanson and Brendan Kiley

SKAGIT COUNTY — The sun set Thursday over the soggy and worried people of Western Washington while the fast-running Skagit River, full of sediment and debris, swelled.

More than 78,000 people throughout the flood plain, including the low-lying communities of Mount Vernon and Burlington, had been told to evacuate. Some left for high ground, calling on friends and family. Others struck out for a Red Cross shelter. Some took their chances and hunkered down. 

Everybody went to sleep wondering whether their world would be the same when they awoke.

The most dire predictions showed that the river might rise higher than 40 feet, enough to run over the top of Mount Vernon’s floodwall and stress the area’s levees like never before, authorities warned.

But as daylight crept over the region Friday, the cities still stood. The raging river waters breached neither flood walls nor protective levees and, so far, no deaths have been reported. These communities let out a collective sigh of relief as the worst of these record-setting floods seemed to have passed, the waters now receding. 

To be sure, these floods did wreak havoc across Western Washington. Emergency workers rushed to rescue people trapped in their trailer homes and vehicles. Homes and businesses are still flooded. Roads and highways are washed out, and many remain closed. Ski seasons are delayed, and Leavenworth even canceled its fabled annual Christmastown festival through the weekend.

But by all accounts, this flood could have been much worse. Local and state officials braced for catastrophe and death, urgently requesting help from the federal government to defray growing costs.

Preparing for the atmospheric river

Heading into this week, forecasters warned of a major storm system that would remain over the Pacific Northwest for days, dumping inches upon inches of rain. 

Early signs of flooding arose across the region. Pooling water, stranded vehicles, even some trapped people. Meteorologists and climatologists wondered whether any of the precipitation would arrive as snowpack, a sore sight for a drought-parched state. 

Quickly, however, attention turned to the rising levels of the Skagit and Snohomish rivers, among many of the region’s other waterways.

Crews in Mount Vernon began putting a series of metal slats along their downtown stretch abutting the Skagit. This floodwall guarded off the swollen river in 2021, and they’d rely on it once more.

But as the rain fell, concerns grew. 

By the middle of the week, local and state officials prepared for as many as 100,000 people who might need to flee rising waters. Levees along the river are designed for floods so severe they can be expected every 25 years or so, but this one was projected to be much worse. Most expected a flood so strong, the likes of it would only be seen once a century. 

A rising tide

Gov. Bob Ferguson headlined a news conference Thursday morning with other emergency managers and public officials. They warned of the danger ahead and asked people to stay away from the floodplains. 

Early projections showed the river would likely crest around 40 feet in Mount Vernon, a level that would have sent water pouring over the top of the city’s flood walls. Engineers worried the levees might not hold. Already, they were seeping water in some places.

All the while, the human element remained a challenge. Many left town, but others stayed, some even walking along the tops of the very levees that might have failed.

By Rebecca Moss and Manuel Villa

In the aftermath of the 2014 Oso landslide, it was clear there were significant gaps in how the state had mapped and prepared for the risk of such a catastrophic event. Many people in the community did not know their homes made them vulnerable to a life-threatening disaster. 

As bodies were dug from the caked earth, lawmakers and state environmental planners set in motion plans to prevent such harm from repeating. A new mapping project was launched to meaningfully document Washington’s landslide risk — tools intended to inform the public, local government and emergency planners. 

But over a decade later, as a historic atmospheric river inundated Western Washington, the map is still unfinished. Critical projections about human and property risk, and which areas of Washington are most likely to experience landslides, still do not exist for much of the state. 

On Sunday, a second atmospheric river is expected to hit the region, which is still reeling from record flooding and evacuation orders for 100,000 people.

“It is a knowledge gap and something we are hoping to address,” Joe Smillie, a spokesperson for the Washington Department of Natural Resources, said Saturday. “It’s funds, time and manpower at the end of the day.” 

While experts say Washington has made significant strides in landslide mapping since Oso, mapping tools intended to help people understand the risk where they live — or consider risk before buying a new home — still require the public and local governments to use piecemeal mapping systems. 

Since 2016, the Legislature has appropriated at least $23 million for an elaborate geo-mapping portal that, one day, will have mapped not only every landslide that has occurred in Washington (once a landslide has happened, future landslides are more likely) but also the level of susceptibility statewide for a landslide risk. 

To do this, the state has conducted extensive lidar mapping, an acronym for light detection and ranging — technology that uses light-pulsing lasers to map the Earth’s shape with precise, three-dimensional detail. 

The Department of Natural Resources has so far mapped a third of the state, which includes documenting between 40,000 and 50,000 existing landslides. Only Pierce County and the Columbia River Gorge have been mapped for both existing and future risk.

Some areas, including King County, have done their own mapping work.

“We are doing the best we can,” said Kate Mickelson, who leads the state’s landslide mapping team. “It’s an enormous undertaking, and we are ahead of most states.”

Still, DNR officials say the agency does not know when it will finish this work. 

“It will take us many, many years based on the amount of landslides and steep terrain and the amount of funding and people I have,” she said Saturday. California is the only state that has surpassed Washington in landslide mapping work, Mickelson said. 

But because Washington’s state mapping tool is incomplete, University of Washington landslide engineer Joe Wartman said he believes the best available map — and the one he uses for his research — is a new national susceptibility map published by the U.S. Geological Survey. 

For years, the risk of landslides was not given the level of emergency attention or resources as disasters like earthquakes and wildfires. But in 2021, federal legislation directed new emergency planning efforts to landslides, contributing to the USGS mapping tool. 

“We have come a long way,” he said.

The national map does not provide the degree of granular detail the state map is undertaking but provides a cohesive picture of where there is hazardous, landslide-prone terrain not only in Washington but across the nation. 

What no map does is correlate this perilous geology to the actual human and structural risk for our state, he said. 

Those kinds of risk maps “are not available,” Wartman said, but he added that they should be. 

“I can only say that we are capable of doing this. … It is entirely something that is scientifically achievable. So why are we not there?” he added. 

The question of why, according to the Department of Natural Resources, comes down to time, money and staff, Mickelson said. The state has made significant gains since 2014, Mickelson and other experts agreed. Before Oso, DNR had just one part-time person tasked with landslide work, and now the agency has between six and 12 employees working on mapping and wildfire debris flow monitoring that contribute to landslides. Still, more people and funding would be necessary to accelerate the complex mapping project, she said.  

Wartman, however, said granular risk mapping is information that not everybody wants. If a home is identified as being within a clear landslide risk area, it could diminish property value, making it harder to sell or build new developments. Identifying risk could also make the government or developers liable when a landslide occurs. 

But without risk mapping, when extreme rainstorms hit, people may not know they may be in harm’s way or how to protect themselves, Wartman said, which is what happened at Oso.

“There is a real advantage to knowing you are in a hazard zone,” he said. Critically, he said, it makes people more likely to survive.

When the rain comes, listen for the sound of snapping branches, the crack of the earth or faint rumbling below. Notice the subtle shifting of the ground, how otherwise vertical trees or fence poles now appear askew.

Then, Wartman said, people can know they should leave or move their families to a higher floor, away from an upward-facing slope, where they are more likely to survive.

The type of extreme rainfall Western Washington has seen in the last week — which, after a brief pause on Friday and Saturday, is expected to see a new, albeit smaller storm system begin Sunday — is more likely to result in shallow landslides, rather than the deep-seated unearthing that caused the destruction near Oso. 

If this storm had come in March, rather than December, Wartman said, he would have been far more concerned. In the spring, the groundwater swells with snowmelt, and when that is met with a heavy storm event like an atmospheric river, deeper geological shifts can cause an entire hillside to collapse. 

Mickelson also urged the public to be alert and use every resource available, from maps to the state’s online home safety guidelines, to stay safe in the coming days, weeks and months. 

“We have more rain coming,” she said. 

As blue skies temporarily crested over Washington on Saturday, Skagit County officials feared some homes in Concrete might be at risk of a landslide. They called on geologists from the Department of Natural Resources. But when state experts went to reference their own map, Mickelson said, the technology was down. 

Mickelson said DNR staff used backup data to re-create the maps needed to help Skagit County. By late afternoon, the online mapping tool appeared to be working again for the public. 

Still, in the critical hours since the National Weather Service issued an alert for heightened landslide risk early Friday morning, the mapping technology designed to help people understand whether or not they might be safe had been dark.