ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
Heavy rain in the Pacific Northwest has swollen rivers far beyond their banks, prompting the state and federal government to declare a statewide emergency. The Skagit River north of Seattle crested yesterday, higher than ever recorded. Hundreds of people who did not evacuate in time have been rescued from their homes and even their cars. Thousands who did evacuate may not be able to return to their homes for days, and there is more rain in the forecast. KUOW's Scott Greenstone joins us now from Burlington, Washington. Thanks for being with us, Scott.
SCOTT GREENSTONE, BYLINE: Hey. Thanks, Rob.
SCHMITZ: So, Scott, you're in a town where people were told to evacuate yesterday. Did they?
GREENSTONE: Some did. You know, some did not. The river here is still really high. I saw a barn half submerged in it yesterday...
SCHMITZ: Wow.
GREENSTONE: ...And a piece of, like, barn siding floating by in the river. But the water levels have begun to recede in the neighborhoods, and so some people are, you know, returning to check on the damage, even, you know, just to see if they can come back to their homes. I went down one street, and I met a woman named Jocelyn Alm (ph), who was standing outside her totally flooded-out home, and there was a crowd gathered and someone had waded in to look in the windows and told her this.
JOCELYN ALM: He goes, all your couches are floating. All your stuff is just floating.
KENNETH: All the bananas are floating.
ALM: He goes, your bananas are floating. And I said, Oh, well, God, if we lost our bananas, we lost everything.
KENNETH: The only thing is that we had in this back bedroom there was pictures that we had forever.
GREENSTONE: And that's her husband, Kenneth (ph). So they were worrying about family pictures. They had put them up high, and, you know, they're just kind of considering, are those totally gone?
SCHMITZ: Yeah. That's tough. I mean, you've got the Washington National Guard there, and now there's been a declaration of an emergency. Federal resources like FEMA can help. What are officials saying about the damage so far?
GREENSTONE: They are saying it's still a little early to tell or give many numbers, and it could be, unfortunately, that more damage is coming because right now, with all the deeply saturated earth from all this rainfall - right? - there's a high risk of landslides across the region. A couple landslides have already closed some regional highways for periods of time.
SCHMITZ: Wow. I mean, Washington is a state that is, of course, known for its rain.
GREENSTONE: Yeah.
SCHMITZ: What makes these storms unusual?
GREENSTONE: You know, it's a common misconception. I think the Seattle area has many drizzly days but is not so used to a big dumping of water during these so-called atmospheric rivers that we are experiencing multiple of right now. So people around here, you know, many of them have never seen anything like this, even in 1990, when we set the previous records that we're now breaking. So I talked to Pedro Cortez, who's worked in farms and flower fields here in Skagit County his whole life. Since 1966 he's lived here. Never evacuated. He looked out the window Thursday night at 10 p.m. and saw police lights.
PEDRO CORTEZ: I wonder who they pulled over. But he was - I see he got out of the car, came to my house and knocked on the door and said, hey, guys, have to move out 'cause the water's coming pretty fast.
GREENSTONE: And he and his wife had less than an hour to get out of their home.
SCHMITZ: That is KUOW's Scott Greenstone. Thank you, Scott.
GREENSTONE: Thanks for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF J DILLA SONG, "SO FAR TO GO (FEAT COMMON & D'ANGELO)") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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