Snohomish County preps for potential flooding as heavy rainfall continues in Western Washington

SNOHOMISH COUNTY, Wash. — Officials in Snohomish County are warning about moderate to major flooding of rivers as heavy rainfall continues to fall in Western Washington.

“One of the things that has us particularly concerned about this weather event, it’s not just the really significant rainfall we’re going to see over the next 48 hours, but it’s also that it’s going to warm up rapidly and our snow levels are going to rise and a lot of that snow that dumped down in the mountains over the weekend is going to melt and come down our rivers as well,” said the director of the Department of Emergency Management in Snohomish County, Lucia Schmit.

She said people in the county need to know their risk, especially if they live in the flood plane. You can check if you live in the floodplain here.

Schmit said if you live in the floodplain, you need to be ready in case there are evacuations.

“Get together important papers, the passports, the insurance documents, the birth certificates that are critical if there is an emergency but really kind of a pain to replace if you lose them, so get those together. Get together some clothing, some food in case you do need to leave your house in a hurry and all the stuff you can’t take, move that up to a higher shelf,” she said.

There is also a possibility of power outages. Snohomish PUD spokesman Aaron Swaney said to make sure you have emergency kits ready and that your batteries are charged.

“If the weather really starts to blow we’re going to have crews really kind of staged throughout the county so they can respond quickly to different areas,” Swaney said.

He also said the best way to report an outage is through their website. If you can’t get internet access, you can also call 425-783-1000.

He said to make sure that you report all downed trees or powerlines by calling 911 and then the utility.

Bruce Austin lives in the City of Snohomish and has lived through some historic floods dating back to the 1990s.

“In 1990 they had a lot of erosion on the river here and if you notice they put the walkway along the river and all those boulders up around the bend there were due because of the erosion from the flooding in the early 90s,” he said.

He and his wife Rose don’t live in the floodplain but say they still prepare when there’s inclement weather.

“Candles, you have to have candles because the power goes out and we have a backup generator,” Rose said.

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