Impact of flooding in Pacific SW?

[frugal-one]

Wondering how Bae and others in this area are faring?

[bae]

My county, San Juan County, was relatively unscathed. There are some wacky weather effects that typically shield us from mainland weather events. Plus, we don’t really have any river systems. The real danger here will be any high winds that come, the land is heavily forested but the giant trees have very very shallow roots and blow over when the soil is over saturated.

Our neighboring county on the mainland, Skagit County, had to evacuate 70,000 plus people, and levee inspections are still underway. Significant flooding and damage there. More rain expected Sunday. They have the mighty Skagit River to deal with.

My partner teaches at an elementary school that is in Skagit County, they sent her and her class home early Wednesday, and kept the school closed Thursday and Friday as well.

[bae]

Some good footage and raw interviews I just came across:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIktw7VsUmQ

[frugal-one]

This is some of the area we visited in September. So sad to see the devastation!

[rosarugosa]

Oh no, how awful. I had no idea.

[happystuff]

Sending prayers for everyone to be safe.

[KayLR]

Same as Bae here. No big river system, but lots of big trees. Landslides will become an issue as well. I was downtown yesterday and met some women who were on a tour bus which was supposed to head over to Leavenworth (tourist town many of you may know) but the highway has been closed due to a landslide so they detoured over this way. Nice for our towns where they were detoured to, but Leavenworth and other towns on I-5 and east will suffer.

The devastation to homes is terrible. it is so unseasonably warm.

It's Pacific NW, by the way.

[rosarugosa]

I'm glad you folks were not affected. I watched Bae's video, and I feel terrible for those impacted.

[KayLR]

More rain now and more expected. Tomorrow we're supposed to have high winds as well which means downed trees with all the ground saturation. Possibly more evacuations. The local power and public works guys will be hard at work.

[iris lilies]

More rain now and more expected. Tomorrow we're supposed to have high winds as well which means downed trees with all the ground saturation. Possibly more evacuations. The local power and public works guys will be hard at work.
Yikes, even more? Sorry to hear this

[bae]

Even here where we are somewhat isolated from the brunt, tonight during a single 2 hour period we ended up sending out multiple ambulance crews to patients’ homes, along with chainsaw crews and the power company, to clear the road and downed power lines so we could get to the patient and medevac them. In one case, they had to chainsaw their way back out as well, since the road reblocked itself while they were loading up the patient.

The Washington State Ferry Service diverted an entire ferry for us, and two of the other islands here that had ambulances with patients, which is a very rare thing for them to do. But the wind and weather were so bad here this afternoon that none of the helicopter or fixed-wing aircraft could fly patients, and our normal smaller-boat evacuation methods were also unsafe because of sea conditions.

The WSF probably saved 3-4 lives doing that. Good on them!!!!

[nswef]

Thanks for the report, Bae. I cannot imagine the fear.

[bae]

In case you want a behind-the-scenes look at our high-tech command center here on the island:

https://i.imgur.com/XArhtDQ.jpeg

[bae]

Levees around the state have started failing, yesterday and this morning, causing more evacuations, including several suburbs of Seattle.

Meanwhile, our Canadian friends across the border are also having a bad time, with evacuations, and Vancouver itself having many of its road/rail connections cut off by the waters.

High winds and more rain are in the cards later tonight.

I’m quite glad I finished installing about 30kWh of battery power for my home just two weeks ago (to get the installation done before the Federal tax credits go away at the end of the year) - this should give me enough power for the house for about a month, if I switch the home to low-power-consumption mode. After that month, I’d have to fire up my propane-powered generator for a few hours to recharge them all. The project was initiated in reaction to our local rural electrical cooperative informing us that they expect rolling blackout/brownouts (California-style) starting here in a few years. This storm, however, has the potential to cut off power to the county for a week or so if The Wrong Things Happen, which they sometimes do.

I’ve also preemptively brought online my backup of the county’s emergency communications center, in case communications to the island get cut off, which sometimes happens. (I believe I related the tale about 10 or so years ago, when we had two outages in the same year, one for ~10 days, one for ~4 days, during which time cell phones, landlines, and internet were out county-wide). We have three backup sites for the county’s main comms facility on our island - one at my main fire station, one at my house, one at the house of another firefighter on the other side of the island. This is to handle the predicted partition of the island into 3 isolated areas during a Cascadia Fault earthquake, and a few other similar disaster scenarios. I successfully passed test traffic from my house down to the state emergency center this morning over radio.

I’m not sure your normal citizen really groks how much behind-the-scenes work goes on, even in good times, to prepare for and respond to events like this.

[KayLR]

I'm sure you are right about the "normal citizen," Bae. I may be slightly abnormal as I have a brother who works in local emergency, and I did my internship with and volunteered for the Red Cross. Worked in Florida during Hurricane Charley. So I'm aware.

Good luck with everything. Pretty cool about the ferries. I'm surrounded by evergreen trees. One already leans, but away from our house at least.

[KayLR]

Interestingly The Columbian is running a story today looking back on the flood of 1996. This last week's flooding still (and so far) has not broken that year's record. I remember that one. There were several towns with boil orders. My town included...the marina house boats were really overcome. I was working at the health dept then with public communications. Really exciting as we also had a measles outbreak going on too.