Small city near Seattle declares state of emergency

A state of emergency was declared in a small city inside Washington state in US this week after a warning system for a dam protecting the city from being flooded falsely went off a fourth time since 2020, CNN reported citing city officials.

The alarm system in Carnation, about 30 miles east of Seattle near the confluence of the Snoqualmie and Tolt rivers, is intended to alert residents to evacuate if the Tolt Dam fails.

The city of Carnation in a news release said that the false alarms have sent the city of 2,300 residents in a panic and has raised “concerns and doubts about the City of Seattle’s ability to operate the Tolt Dam.”

While Seattle Public Utilities is currently working to replace its system with new technology and equipment, according to the Carnation website, false alarms remain an issue, with the latest system failure reported on August 22, prompting a state of emergency to be issued on Wednesday.

Carnation Mayor Jim Ribail told CNN: “This council has been working really hard since 2020 to try to get a resolution to this situation. At this point, everybody on the city council and city staff is completely fed up with this.”

Ribail said the issue needs to be “fast-tracked.”

In a statement, Seattle Public Utilities told CNN they are “currently in active discussions with Carnation officials and our emergency partners on how best to meet community expectations following a false alarm of the Tolt Dam Early Warning System that sounded in and around the City on August 22”, as per CNN.

“SPU takes incidents like this seriously and sincerely apologizes for any confusion or concern the false alarm may have caused residents,” the statement said.

Carnation residents have now been told to quickly reach higher ground to avoid being inundated with water. They can either use a dirt or paved path to reach a designated safe location.

Frequent drills are run by the city to prepare residents for a potential dam failure and a siren test goes off every Wednesday at noon, along with prerecorded messages.

“There’s a warning system in case the dam breaches to tell the town to evacuate,” Ribail told CNN.