TUKWILA, Wash. — 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
Meanwhile, residents near a breached levee in King County 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 on the river in King County. About 2,000 people live in the area affected by the warning, according to the weather service.
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. The department said 220 homes were evacuated.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Seattle District personnel were working with King County officials to assess damage and determine next steps. The corps planned to deploy barriers and sandbags.
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 following a week of heavy rains, 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 in parts of Kent, Renton and Tukwila, 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. No one was injured, McCluskey said.
Authorities in Renton and Tukwila said Monday afternoon that the flooding was confined to small, industrial areas and that no residents were being evacuated.
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Rush reported from Portland, Oregon. Associated Press writer Christopher L. Keller contributed from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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