Snohomish valley expected to fill up ‘like a bathtub’

Published 9:16 pm Thursday, January 8, 2009

SNOHOMISH — The levees along the Snohomish River continued to hold this evening as rising floodwaters neared record levels.

Noel Gilbrough, assistant flooding engineer for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, said up to two feet of water was flowing over the Marshland and French Slough levees near Snohomish.

That is how the levees are supposed to work, bleeding off the force of rising water in a controlled flood.

The Snohomish is now expected to crest at Snohomish tonight at 9 p.m., tying the record set during 1990, Gilbrough said.

The river was nearly that high just before 7:30, officials said.

Gilbrough said the Snohomish likely will be running high enough to top levees Friday and possibly into Saturday.

“We are going to see water pushing over the levees for a day or two,” he said.

Snohomish County is getting hit particularly hard by flooding, said Chris Burke, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. A state of emergency has been declared.

“The worst flooding in Washington is happening in Snohomish and King counties,” Burke said.

Floodwaters are receding in parts of Snohomish county but residents and emergency crews in Stanwood and Snohomish continue to brace for record flooding in the coming hours.

The Stillaguamish River was expected to crest at 32 feet at Stanwood at 6 p.m.

The Snohomish River is forecast to crest in Snohomish at 33.5 feet.That’s the level it hit in 1990. It reached 33.49 feet in 2006.

“Once it gets this high, it’s hard to predict when it is going to crest,” Burke said. “It won’t get much higher vertically, but it will go farther out horizontally.”

Widespread flooding still is expected.

“It will look like ‘Lake Snohomish’. The bathtub is already filling up,” said Norman Skjelbreia, a flood engineer for U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

The system of levees and dikes that control flooding in the Snohomish River valley has been tweaked over the years so that floodwaters are released in a uniform way that limits damage.

The system performed exactly as designed during the flooding of 2006, keeping river crest an inch below the record level set in 1990.

Skjelbreia said the Snohomish levees appeared to be working well again in this flood, and he was confident the system would hold as the highest water approached this evening.

“I’ve been doing this for 30 years, and the fact I’m sitting here without much of a headache shows they are working,” he said.

Meteorologists attribute the flooding largely to heavy rains. It rained 10 to 20 inches in the mountains and 3 to 5 inches in the lowlands. Most of that water went into the rivers.

“The flood is not driven by snow melt,” Burke said. “This was caused by heavy rain.”

The flooding shut down more than 40 roads, including major thoroughfares. Highway 9 is shut down in Snohomish after floodwaters spilled over the roadway. Highway 530 between I-5 and Arlington remained closed.

A dike along the Stillaguamish broke this afternoon sending floodwaters gushing across farmland. Another dike along the Pilchuck River also was breached by floodwaters and dozens of people east of town were forced to leave their homes.

Stanwood officials were forced to build a second sand berm along Highway 532 to protect downtown. The Stillaguamish River in Stanwood was expected to crest there at 32 feet this evening.

Snohomish County sheriff’s deputies, search and rescue crews and firefighters rescued dozens of people stranded by floodwaters, including about 40 residents at the Three River Trailer Park on the Snohomish River.

Officials have been closely monitoring the levees.

“Our fear would be a levee breach,” said Snohomish Deputy Fire Chief Ron Simmons, who has witnessed numerous floods over the years.

Record flooding in the 1990s caused breaks in levees and inundated the valley.

Simmons said he is hopeful that the majority of people who should have evacuated have already left areas likely to flood. If not, the fire department likely will need assistance from the sheriff’s office search and rescue crews and private boats to rescue people.

Rising floodwaters circled Brad and Charis Yates home northeast of Snohomish on Sexton Road.

“This year it just keeps coming,” Brad Yates said.

The couple and their two dogs are trapped inside, watching water from the Pilchuck River creep toward their front door. They’ve lived here since 1995 and they’ve never seen floodwaters this close to the house. Normally, they’re able to get in and out of the house.

“We’ve got about 18 inches before it gets to the house,” Brad Yates said. “We’re just hanging out and waiting.”

Yates took the day off work as an auto mechanic and has been monitoring flood predictions online since 4 a.m. The rising waters killed a chicken and rooster and the family’s other 15 chickens are huddled up in their perches.

“We can’t get out to them,” he said. :”There’s 4 feet of water up the side of the chicken coop.”

Rescue crews this afternoon reached out to six people stranded in their homes after the Pilchuck River broke through a small dike north of Three Lakes Road.

Snohomish County sheriff’s divers around 2 p.m. used two boats to get through to six people and four dogs trapped in their homes on 118th Drive SE, Snohomish County Fire District 4 Battalion Chief Craig Heike said.

The Pilchuck crashed the small dike and came gushing into the secluded neighborhood north of Three Lakes Road, Heike said. Few houses were affected.

Emergency crews used boats and hovercraft to reach people stranded by floodwaters in Stanwood. KIRO 7 TV posted raw video of the rescue efforts on its Web site.

People were surrounded by four to five-feet of water and asked for help leaving their homes, North County Fire &EMS Battalion Chief Christian Davis said. Rescues happened on Marine Drive and Thomle Road just south of the city.

The Stillaguamish River at Arlington crested at 10 a.m. today at 20.8 feet — a bit shy of the previous high-water record. A breach in a dike there flooded farmland and shut down businesses on the east side of Island Crossing.

The worst of the flooding appeared to be over in Gold Bar and Sultan.

Gold Bar officials were up most of the night monitoring the Skykomish and two tributaries, Wallace River and May Creek, said Gold Bar mayor Crystal Hill.

People living near May Creek saw the tributary flood places locals hadn’t seen in recent memory, she said. At least one family living outside town near Highway 2 had to be rescued from their home just before midnight, as floodwaters came up to their door and flowed into their home. Everyone in the family, which included children and a senior, were unhurt.

In Sultan this morning, water crept up Main Street and stopped between Third and Fourth Streets and appears to be receding.

The waters could stick around for a while.

The Snohomish River likely will take a long time returning to its banks because anticipated high tides will act like a dam on the lower river.

Decreasing rainfall may provide some relief. There will be a chance or rain or showers through the weekend, but the precipitation won’t affect flooding.

“Compared to the really heavy rain we have had in the last couple of days, this is like a drop, not the bucket that has been poured over us,” said Johnny Burg, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.