A man who drove past warning signs was found dead in a car submerged in flood waters near Seattle, Washington, on Tuesday, in the first reported death following a week of heavy rain and flooding in the region.
Governor Bob Ferguson said on Tuesday the extent of the damage in Washington state is profound but unclear as more high water, mudslides and power outages were in the forecast.
Rescue swimmers found the driver and his vehicle in about 6ft (1.8 meters) of water in a ditch in the Snohomish area north-east of Seattle, the Snohomish county sheriff’s office said in a news release. The driver, believed to be a 33-year-old man, was pronounced dead at the scene after lifesaving measures failed, officials said. No one else was in the car and the death was under investigation.
A barrage of storms from weather systems stretching across the Pacific has dumped close to 2ft (0.6 metres) of rain in parts of the Cascade Mountains, swelling rivers far beyond their banks and prompting more than 600 rescues across 10 counties.
Mudslides have torn through communities. The intense weather is expected to last until at least Wednesday.
On Tuesday, residents near a breached levee in the city of Pacific, 20 miles (32km) south of Seattle, were told to evacuate an area near the White River. Police told residents to “go now!”
Just hours before, an evacuation alert was lifted for residents near another broken levee in the same county.
“We’re in for the long haul,” Ferguson, the governor, said at a news conference. “If you get an evacuation order, for God’s sakes, follow it.”
It won’t be until after waters recede and landslide risk subsides that crews will be able to fully assess the damage, Ferguson said. The state and some counties are making several million dollars available to help people pay for hotels, groceries and other necessities, pending more extensive federal assistance that Ferguson and Washington’s congressional delegation expect to see approved.
According to the governor’s office, first responders had conducted at least 629 rescues and 572 assisted evacuations. As many as 100,000 people had been under evacuation orders at times, many of them in the flood plain of the Skagit River north of Seattle.
Elevated rivers and flood risk could persist until at least late this month, according to the National Weather Service. Wind and flood watches and warnings are expected in much of the north-west for the next couple of days as storms bring rain, heavy mountain snow and high winds.
A small section of the Desimone levee beside the Green River failed on Monday, prompting an evacuation order covering parts of three suburbs. The evacuation order was lifted on Monday evening.
During a briefing on flood damage from last week’s storm, Jamal Beckham, the Snohomish regional fire and rescue battalion chief, said the majority of calls his crews had responded to were from people who tried to drive through water or were stranded atop vehicles.
“They did not understand how rapidly the water rises,” Beckham said Saturday. “We pulled people off the roof of their cars. And if we had not gotten there the car would have been completely covered.”
They also responded to people who didn’t expect their houses to be flooded and did not leave when they were told, he said.
A 911 caller who reported water entering an apartment in Pacific at about 1.20am on Tuesday was the first sign of the levee breach for the Valley regional fire authority, spokesperson Kelly Hawks said. Crews evacuated about 100 people early Tuesday, pulling some people from the windows of their first-floor apartments, she said.
“That was how quickly the water was coming in,” Hawks said.
Eventually the residents of about 220 homes evacuated. No injuries were reported.
