TUKWILA, Wash. (AP) — A man who drove past warning signs was found dead early Tuesday in a car submerged in floodwaters near Seattle, officials said, in the first reported death following a week of heavy rain and flooding in the region.
Rescue swimmers found the driver and his vehicle in about 6 feet (1.8 meter) of water in a ditch in the Snohomish area northeast 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.
During a briefing on flood damage from last week’s storm, Snohomish Regional Fire and Rescue Battalion Chief Jamal Beckham said the majority of calls his crews 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
The National Weather Service’s Weather Prediction Center expects wind, winter and flooding watches and warnings in much of the Northwest for the next couple of days as a series of storm systems bring heavy rain, heavy mountain snow and high winds. The first storm system was set to arrive in the Pacific Northwest on Tuesday night, bringing heavy rainfall from the northern California coast up to western Washington on Wednesday. Heavy snow was forecast for the northern Cascades on Tuesday evening was expected to spread to the southern Cascades Wednesday morning.
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Residents near a breached levee in King County, in Washington, were told to leave their homes early Tuesday, just hours after an evacuation alert was lifted for residents near another broken levee in the same county. Police in the city of Pacific, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Seattle, urged those in the evacuation area near the White River to “Go Now!” The National Weather Service office in Seattle issued a flash flood warning for the levee breach until later Tuesday morning.
Faced with the breach, Pacific’s police department put out a call on social media Tuesday morning for a tractor with a bucket capable of reaching 8 feet high, to fill a sandbagging machine. Once the tractor was acquired, the department called for members of the public to help fill sandbags.
A 911 caller who reported water entering an apartment in Pacific around 1:20 a.m. 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, adding that eventually the residents of about 220 homes were told to evacuate. No injuries were reported.
Public works officials were working Tuesday to clear the water and repair the levee so people can return to their homes, she said.
The King County Sheriff’s Office used a helicopter equipped with a loudspeaker and knocked on doors to alert people to the evacuation order, evacuating about 1,200 people overnight, according to Brandyn Hull, communications manager for the sheriff’s office.
The levee breaches followed days of heavy rain and flooding that inundated communities, forced the evacuations of tens of thousands of people and prompted scores of rescues throughout western Washington state.
On Monday, crews used sandbags to shore up the Desimone levee beside the Green River after a small section of it failed, prompting an evacuation order covering parts of three suburbs, officials said.
The evacuation order from King County was sent to about 1,100 homes and businesses east of the Green River, said Brendan McCluskey, the county’s emergency management director. On Monday evening, King County officials announced that the evacuation alert was lifted east of the Green River and it was safe to return to the area.
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Rush reported from Portland, Oregon. Associated Press writer Christopher L. Keller contributed from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
