[Letter by Katy Lindell – Snoqualmie Resident. Views expressed are those of the author, not the Living Snoqualmie website. You may submit letters to the editor info@livingsnoqualmie.com.]
When the river rises, so should confidence in the City of Snoqualmie’s emergency communications, but the recent flood highlighted a serious shortcoming. Downtown Snoqualmie residents deserve clear, direct guidance, but instead received vague alerts that created more confusion than clarity.
One message ordered, “Leave the Downtown District now,” without clearly stating who it was directed towards, leaving residents wondering if it was an evacuation order. Shortly after, the city advised that “residents who are considering evacuating should do so sooner than later.” Should we consider evacuating? Without defined criteria, thresholds, or maps outlining areas of concern, that wording leaves families guessing about the actual level of danger.
Using historical data on which neighborhoods, streets, and even individual parcels flood at particular water levels, the city should have a publicly accessible “Ready-Set-Go” evacuation zone map. Without such a map, residents found themselves crowdsourcing information via social media instead of relying on an official source for real-time guidance on whether they should stay or go.
And while water threatened homes, the city offered no emergency shelter. Neighboring North Bend opened two, which were effectively inaccessible for Snoqualmie residents due to road closures and standstill traffic. A city cannot claim to prioritize public safety or recommend evacuation while offering no emergency refuge within its own limits.
This criticism is not directed at our first responders. Firefighters, police, public works staff, and volunteers deserve deep thanks for their tireless work in dangerous conditions. The issue lies with the city’s communication systems, not the people in the trenches doing the hard work.
Snoqualmie’s residents showed resilience and strong community spirit during this flood. Now the city government must learn from this event and commit to providing clear alerts, practical evacuation tools, and real emergency refuge services. Our community deserves nothing less.
Katy Lindell,
Downtown Snoqualmie resident
Comments
Thoughtful and well-stated. Something for the new administration to work on.
This letter has many great insights. The City of Snoqualmie is doing well in many areas, and this resident is highlighting an area that needs more support to better help residents during emergencies such as high water/floods and other events that are rare but can still happen, such as ice storms or forest fires or other such dangerous events.
Setting up an emergency center requires commitment from the governing authorities, including the city administration as well as emergency services to coordinate rescue and safety efforts. And the coordination should include the many eager volunteers who can provide assistance to neighbors or communicate rescue efforts and escape routes people who are not directly connected to the city’s emergency center.
The commitment would require setting up an official emergency center with practice sessions throughout the year so that in an emergency everyone is ready to go. And it would work even better if the two emergency centers, the one offered by the City of North Bend as well as the City of Snoqualmie, so that residents of both cities would not have to struggle to figure out who can do what.
An example of this is the residents of Moon Valley who are in the 98065 ZIP Code but are physically closer to the administrative offices and services of North Bend. They are cut off by high water from the North Fork, and need help from the appropriate city authorities – but who does that for them?
None of the comments in this letter or my own responses are to negatively criticize, because both cities are doing many things well. The letter and my comments are to bring to light an area that needs more attention, and my hope is that the appropriate people in each city will do the work to establish a good working relationship between emergency services and communicating with their own residents what the city is doing for them before, during, and after an emergency.
I will be more blunt. This was a failure on the part of local government. With all the forecast models, predictions, lessons from past floods, modern technology the city had no plan. They failed the residents of the city who live here, who pay taxes.
I ask another question for tomorrow. Will they learn and act action?
Thanks for your thoughtful letter. When I saw the Mayor of Snoqualmie on the news this week I did have concerns. Seemed like she didn’t have much to say in comparison to other Mayors that were interviewed. Hopefully the City is better prepared next time
Living in another state and concerned for a family and their animals who live in Snoqualmie, I turned to the City of Snoqualmie website to try and find information about flood conditions, evacuation efforts, etc. I could not find anything useful. No photos. No emergency orders. What communication tools does the city use for emergencies and how is the city helping residents stay safe during natural disasters?
From another downtown resident, I couldn’t agree more. At one point the information posted on the city’s website reflected something completely different than what the city’s social media was posting. I don’t have social media and was told by someone else. I had been actively checking the city’s website. Some of the information also directly contradicted information from the King County Emergency Operations center and Flood Watch.
We have several animals and evacuating was going to be no small feat. The messaging from the city was infrequent, outdated, and vague. With the uncertainty this led to me physically checking the river myself and monitoring projected river levels posted from the county. My assumption was we would not be receiving any heads up like “ready-set-go” and we were just going to have to make the call when we felt like we should.
It was all disappointing to say the least and the city has some work to do. Hopefully the incoming administration can keep this in mind.