By David Ryder and Steve Gorman
BURLINGTON, Washington, Dec 12 (Reuters) – Residents and emergency crews in towns along the rain-engorged Skagit River in western Washington state braced on Friday for potential levee failures while National Guard troops assisted in evacuations after days of severe flooding in the Pacific Northwest.
The entire town of Burlington, a community of about 9,200 people near Puget Sound, was under evacuation on Friday after the river crested at an all-time high of nearly 38 feet (11.6 meters), well above major flood stage, at the city of Mount Vernon just downstream.
“We haven’t seen flooding like this ever,” said Karina Shagren, a spokesperson for the state’s emergency management division. So far there were no reports of casualties or missing people, she said.
The Skagit River flood plain as a whole, a rural area home to about 78,000 people north of Seattle, was already under a Level 3 evacuation notice urging residents to immediately move to higher ground. Evacuation notices covered an estimated 100,000 people statewide.
National Guard troops and sheriff’s deputies were going door to door to facilitate the evacuation, and some were seen paddling stranded Burlington residents to safety in inflatable river rafts through muddy floodwaters.
Flood control levees appeared to be holding firm immediately following the river’s historic crest, testing their strength for the first time since repairs to the earthen embankments were made following the last major flood in that area in 2021, state officials said.
Rains were abating as of Friday. But the National Weather Service posted a flash-flood warning for the river basin downstream to the mouth of the Skagit, where it drains into Puget Sound, citing the potential for levee failures under heavy pressure from the high water.
“Extensive flooding of streets, homes and farmland will be possible” if levees and dikes give way, the Weather Service said.
A levee failure would greatly magnify widespread flooding already occurring across much of western Washington state. Aerial footage broadcast by CNN showed communities inundated in deep, brown water with many homes submerged almost to their rooftops.
The Burlington-Mount Vernon area in Skagit County remained the epicenter of widespread flooding caused by days of torrential downpours extending from northern Oregon north through western Washington state and into British Columbia.
South of Skagit County, National Guard troops also were dispatched to deliver food and check on stranded residents in a number of communities cut off by flooding in adjacent Snohomish County, Shagren said.
The flooding washed out or forced the closure of dozens of roads throughout the region, including most of the Canadian highways leading to the British Columbia port city of Vancouver. Several lengthy stretches of the BNSF Railway, a major freight line serving the Pacific Northwest, were also shut down on Thursday.
The heavy rains were unleashed by an atmospheric river storm, a vast airborne current of dense moisture siphoned from the ocean and swept inland over the Pacific Northwest earlier in the week. Parts of northern Idaho and western Montana also were hit.
(Reporting by David Ryder in Burlington, Washington; Writing and additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
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