SEATTLE — “Déjà vu.”
That was how John Perry, the mayor of Everson, Washington, described what it felt like to watch as floodwater from the Nooksack River began to inundate the streets, homes and businesses of his community for the second time in about four years.
Washington state is once again in the midst of getting hammered by torrential rains and swelling rivers. Communities that have barely recovered from the last major series of storms now face another long rebuilding process.
Everson had just recently finished remodeling City Hall. Now, it was underwater again.
“It’s pretty discouraging,” Perry said. “Our businesses downtown got hit really hard. We’re anticipating probably similar or more extensive damage than in ’21.”
About 100,000 people have been asked to evacuate their homes in Washington as a series of atmospheric river storms drenched the state this week, causing mudslides and shuttering highways. More than a dozen Washington rivers were expected to experience major flooding from Wednesday through Friday, according to the National Weather Service.
More flooding is expected elsewhere. State officials said dikes could fail near the town of Mount Vernon, which is southwest of Everson, as the Skagit River approaches a potentially record-setting crest.
Gov. Bob Ferguson declared a state emergency Wednesday, requested a federal disaster declaration and called in the Washington National Guard.
“The situation is extremely unpredictable,” Ferguson said at a news briefing Thursday. “The flooding levels we’re looking at are potentially historic in nature.”
Ferguson said more than 30 major highways had been closed. No deaths had been reported as of Thursday evening, though there have been several water rescues.
As climate change intensifies rainfall rates and loads the dice for major flood events, Everson’s experience shows how difficult it can be for flood-prone communities to rebuild themselves and to be more resilient before the next disaster strikes.
The town had hired consultants to study the feasibility of a complex dike system, hopefully to save it from the next flood disaster.
“They’re supposed to start in January,” Perry said. Now, it was already too late.
Rivers flooding rivers
The floods — in 2021 and today — were driven by a series of atmospheric river rainfalls.
A pair of storms dumped as much as 16 inches of rain along the western slopes of Washington’s Cascade mountains over the past three days, according to National Weather Service data.
The first storm struck Monday, saturating soil, melting much of the mountain snowpack, raising river levels and causing a few mudslides.
On Wednesday, a second, more powerful storm hit.
“The second round of rain really added the icing to the cake,” said Harrison Rademacher, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Seattle.
Atmospheric river storms are frequent during late fall in the Pacific Northwest. The storms are often called “Pineapple Expresses” in the Northwest because they draw moisture and warmth from Pacific waters near Hawaii.
“Just imagine Washington being at the end of a garden hose. That’s what we’re experiencing,” Rademacher said.
Atmospheric river systems are often primary drivers of annual precipitation for the West Coast, but they also cause destruction, with more than $1.1 billion in yearly flood damage on average, according to research published in 2022. In Western states, 84% of flood damage is associated with atmospheric rivers, research suggests.
Scientists think climate change is influencing atmospheric rivers. Storms can deliver more intense precipitation because a warmer atmosphere can absorb more water vapor.
Temperatures typically rise when an atmospheric river makes landfall. Rademacher said temperatures were about 10 degrees above normal in Seattle on Wednesday.
The last flood
In November 2021, as much as 5 feet of water rushed down Main Street in Everson, leaving city officials like Perry performing dozens of dramatic rescues in Humvees and tractors, with people trapped in vehicles. Sewage spilled into homes; a man died after his vehicle washed off Main Street and into a nearby blueberry field. NBC News profiled the town’s flood struggles the following year.
On Wednesday night, the town took on more water than in 2021, Perry said. He’d been awake for 28 hours and was forced to leave City Hall as water levels rose.
After the 2021 flood, Everson resident Reene Cabrera, an auto-body repair worker, said he worried his home would be a sitting duck if he rebuilt in the town.
On Wednesday night, “the river started racing,” Cabrera said the next morning, and he found himself fleeing once again.
“Financially, I was finally catching up with the debt and repurchasing everything. And now, I have to restart again.”
After the flooding in 2021, Everson officials scrambled to secure grants for buyouts for residents in some of the most dangerous parts of the floodplain and shore up the city’s infrastructure and its flood planning. Perry said the city’s emergency response this time around was smoother.
“We had no loss of life. We were able to close roads sooner,” he said, adding that new floodgates prevented drivers from entering floodwater. “Swift water rescues were cut by probably 90-plus percent.”
Money well spent
Investments in floodplain buyouts seem to have paid off, also.
Tony Chunkapura’s four-bedroom home, which was in the floodplain of the Nooksack River and took on several feet of water in 2021, was demolished and became government property. It took three years, but he was able to recoup the home’s value through a buyout program offered through local governments. Chunkapura ultimately settled in Montana.
“It’s one of the highest spots in town, so I can never be flooded,” he said. “I’m happy I had a chance to get out. ... So many people weren’t able to, and it just got worse this year.”
Nearly a year after the 2021 flooding event, when NBC News visited Everson, residents were on the edge of homelessness, living in hotels, in trailers outside their unlivable houses or with friends.
“A lot of people moved out of the area and didn’t come back. We’ve gotten a lot of those rentals and homes rebuilt, so we’ve been able to house people. We probably lost them all again,” Perry said. “It’s a lot harder facing this knowing what it takes to rebuild.”
The city, once again, faces an uncertain future. And homeowners face another round of difficult choices.
Julieta Garcia-Suarez, who lives in the nearby town of Sumas, chose to raise the ground level of her home by 10 feet after the 2021 floods, well beyond minimum requirements for rebuilding. The home now sits on top of a new garage. On Thursday morning, photos showed floodwater had nearly risen to the top of the garage door.
“Our living space will be OK eventually. The garage probably won’t,” Garcia-Suarez said. “Just when everybody was starting to heal from the trauma, it’s flooding again.”
There is a key difference. In 2021, Everson and Sumas were the hardest-hit locations in the state.
“This time, it wasn’t just us,” Cabrera said. “It was most of Washington.”
Eyes on Washington
Even though days of flooding are ahead, Washington officials say the toll of the deluge is too much for the state to handle on its own.
Ferguson said Thursday he had not yet heard whether the Trump administration would approve his expedited federal disaster declaration. Approval would enable people to seek individual assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for things like housing and home repairs. It would also allow state and local governments to seek federal assistance to remove debris and repair roads, bridges, water facilities and other infrastructure.
Ferguson said he made his case to FEMA’s leaders Wednesday.
“We walked through the numerous highway closures. We walked through the flood levels. We walked through tens of thousands of Washingtonians being evacuated, and we tried to be as persuasive as we could to our partners in the federal government that they need to approve that emergency right away,” Ferguson said.
In a letter Thursday, Washington’s congressional delegation, including Republican Reps. Dan Newhouse and Michael Baumgartner, urged President Donald Trump to approve an expedited disaster request.
The Trump administration has floated overhauling FEMA and providing less disaster relief to states. The issue was top of mind for some of those in Everson.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen, if we’ll even have FEMA support based on the administration going on with everything against the blue states,” Cabrera said.
A White House official said the administration was “prepared to review the Governor’s request once it is received.”
The official said that the administration was tracking conditions on the ground, that FEMA had been activated and that it had sent additional resources to help respond to the situation, including three urban search-and-rescue task forces and an incident management team.
FEMA had deployed liaison officers to the state emergency operations center, the official said, adding that the National Weather Service would continue to monitor the storm and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers would monitor water levels.
Not over yet
While the Nooksack River, near Everson, appeared to crest Thursday morning, other communities were waiting for the peak effects from the deluge to hit their communities.
Mount Vernon, at the mouth of the Skagit River, was bracing for the worst of the floodwaters Friday morning. The river was expected to crest at 39.1 feet as of Thursday afternoon, nearly 2 feet higher than the previous record.
At a briefing Thursday afternoon, local government officials said dikes and levees along the river could fail.
“We’re hoping they hold, but there’s seepage in some spots,” said Lisa Janicki, a Skagit County commissioner.
Julie de Losada, the county’s emergency management director, said that many of the levees were damaged during the 2021 flood event in Mount Vernon and that this flood would test the “security of the dikes.” Would they hold?
“We don’t know yet, until the water starts rising more and pushing against that dike system more. We do know that there’s potential vulnerabilities where those repairs were made since 2021,” she said.
