A Recurring Theme: It Floods Around Here

We've been getting a lot of snow and then rain.

This is the dramatic result:

A flooded Snoqualmie Valley © Alan Berner / The Seattle Times

And so is this:

Hwy 202 road collapse at Fall City © Thomas James Hurst / The Seattle Times

This is becoming an annual occurrence here. We remember the election week deluge of November 2006. And of course the December 2007 floods that swamped Centralia and caused mudslides on clear-cut hillsides.

Just last November the area was dealing with flooding that caused people to evacuate their homes. I took the following photo on my return from a trip as we flew over Duvall:

Snoqualmie Valley, north of Duvall, Nov. 16, 2008 © Daniel Kirkdorffer

These floods are a regular occurrence, yet we continue to build on and live on flood plains as if these things never happened, somehow expecting them not to?

The damage never happens at a good time, and the people affected will have already been dealing with the economic downturn, so this is going to take a long time for people to recover from. But we need to make smarter decisions, and plan for the inevitable flooding that we should expect to happen again, perhaps as soon as in the coming weeks or months, and surely within the next year or two. After all, "Change is coming to Washington", so they say.

Or we could do as we've been doing and relive this all over again the next time it happens, in the same places, in the same way, at the same or greater financial and emotional cost.