Skip to main content Skip main menu and go to secondary menu
King County
Executive Office
Ron Sims, King County Executive 701 Fifth Ave. Suite 3210 Seattle, WA 98104 Phone: 206-296-4040 Fax: 206-296-0194 TTY Relay: 711
Image: King County Exeutive Ron Sims, News Release

Nov. 7, 2006, 9:45 p.m.

Executive Sims visits flooded areas in King County

Watch the Video Video available

Real Media Format

Windows Media Format

 

Text transcript of flood story

Executive Sims tours flood watersNarrator says

The Pineapple Express rain storm that has been hammering King County since Monday has reached historic levels. Several county rivers have flooded, and in some cases topped levee’s, sending water into homes and over roadways. Some residents have only one way to get to their homes…And others, like residents above the upper Preston bridge, which suffered a washout on the eastside of the bridge, may have no way to get to their property.

King County Executive Ron Sims visited the County’s Flood Warning Center early Tuesday morning, for an update on conditions, then headed out to the Snoqualmie and North Bend areas for a first hand look at the flood damage. Sims observed damage not only to homes, property and roads, but to levees. While at Snoqualmie Falls, Sims pointed out the continued need to stay on top of the county’s aging public safety infrastructure, as proposed in his Flood Hazard Management plan, currently before the County Council.

King County Executive Ron Sims says

"We had a huge amount of water go over these falls last night, we had about 60-thousand CFS, which is an incredible amount of water. It’s going to be flooding downstream, the roads are going to be closed there. But you know when you look at what King County has had to do over the years and the partnerships we had to form, things could be so much worse and now they’re not, it’s in partnership with the city of Snoqualmie and the mayor will speak to the partnership we established last year when we widened the channel here in order to accommodate flows and not have it back up into the communities upstream. We’re working on downstream issues making the river functional and wider.

We can’t stop all flooding but we can clearly be in a position to be able to mitigate it and control its impact. There’s things we’re really concerned about now and that is the rain events we’re seeing now, when we’re working with the University of Washington School of Climate Impact, they’re saying this is going to be a pretty typical rain event in the future, we may not get this volume of water but we’re going to see torrential rains and our goal is to make sure we have a levee system that will function for every city in every community. That’s why we have proposed a proposal that allows us to restore the levees and we’re working with County Councilman Reagan Dunn on that project ".

Later in the day Sims watched as residents rowed across backyards in the Shamrock Park area, and spoke with them about the severity of this storm and the impact of flooding on their homes.

Denise Hisey/Shamrock Park Resident says

"This is the fastest it’s come up in the 18 years we’ve lived here. This was the quickest, in an hours time it was well, I wonder what’s going to happen, think it will just come to the driveway? To we have to be gone in a half hour, we have to be out."

Narrator says

King County maintains a levee system that runs along 119 miles of its rivers, with more than 500 flood control facilities.During storms such as this one the levees are regularly inspected by the Department of Natural Resources and Parks - Water and Land Resources Division.The levees protect lives and property located in some 25-thousand acres of floodplain and more than seven-billion dollars in economic infrastructure.

  To top
  Updated: Nov. 7, 2006