I’m glad we’re not on the ground floor of our apartment building — as we live here in the Kent Valley, within about a five-minute walk of the banks of the Green River, we’re smack-dab in the middle of the area of South King County at high risk for flooding.
Four South King County cities face their most serious flooding risk in 40 years next fall and winter because of January damage to a flood-control dam on the Green River, authorities have warned.
The Army Corps of Engineers, which built and maintains the Howard Hanson Dam, says it doesn’t know what caused a 10-foot-wide, 6-foot-deep depression in an abutment to the rock and earthen dam.
As a safety precaution, the Corps will store less water behind the dam until engineers can figure out what caused the problem in the reservoir wall adjoining the spillway — and how to fix it.
In the meantime, the Corps will be forced to release into the lower Green River essentially all rainwater from storms, and risk overwhelming the levees that protect low-lying parts of Auburn, Kent, Renton and Tukwila, the federal agency has warned.
“We need to prepare for a long-term possibility that over the next few flood seasons we may experience anywhere from significant to catastrophic flooding, depending on the event,” said Dana Hinman, a Auburn city spokeswoman.
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A larger number of homes and businesses could be hurt in flood-prone parts of Kent, where about 50,000 people work and 22,000 people live, said Mayor Suzette Cooke. She said the damaged abutment “clearly raises our level of concern” about levees downstream that haven’t been certified as meeting federal standards.
If the substandard Horseshoe Bend Levee were to fail, Cooke said, the Green River Valley could be flooded all the way to Interstate 405 in Renton, possibly severing Highway 167 and two main rail lines.
That Horseshoe Bend Levee is just over two miles upstream of where we live. While the levees closest to us were just worked on all last summer and should be in good shape, if the Horseshoe were to go, I wouldn’t be surprised if we ended up in the evacuation area. Of course, I don’t know for sure, but it might not be a bad idea to have at least a nominal plan for what to do if floodwaters start heading our way.
If I’m at home and have a chance to grab anything, I think my priorities (after the real necessities, like a couple days of clothes, etc.) are going to be grabbing my camera (no big surprise there, huh?) and popping open my computer to pull out the hard drives, double-bag them in gallon-size Ziplocs, and drop ’em in whatever bag I’m carrying. The hardware can be replaced (and would hopefully be covered by insurance), but the data is what’s really important. Hooray for quick-release SATA drives!