Small town near Seattle declares state of emergency over false alarms from dam warning system

By Paradise Afshar and Emma Tucker, CNN

(CNN) — A state of emergency was declared in a small city in Washington state this week after a warning system for a dam protecting the city from being flooded by a reservoir falsely went off a fourth time since 2020, city officials said.

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 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,” the city of Carnation said in a news release.

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 Wednesday.

“This council has been working really hard since 2020 to try to get a resolution to this situation,” Carnation Mayor Jim Ribail told CNN. “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.”

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

As part of the protocol, Carnation residents have 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.

The city runs frequent drills 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.

City suffers ‘PTSD’ from false alarms, mayor says

The first time the alarm was falsely triggered, some residents suffered injuries while attempting to evacuate, he added. Some of the city’s elderly residents even knelt to brace themselves for a wall of water to hit them.

On July 28, 2020, the city’s sirens falsely went off and it sent the town “into a panic,” the mayor added. “It was a complete nightmare.”

Ribail said the incident prompted Seattle Public Utilities to commission a new system.

“Since that time, we have had four false alarms that have happened since 2020,” the mayor said. “The response has always been ‘we’re sorry, we’re sorry, we’re working on it.’”

“We have a city that’s basically suffering from PTSD that is scared to death that something has happened,” he continued.

“It’s been a pretty traumatic experience for the citizens of Carnations for the last three years because we’ve had three more false alarms since then.”

Ribail said the city had made attempts to remedy the situation with officials in Seattle, which owns and operates the Tolt Reservoir and Dams according to the city’s website. The reservoir stores about 30% of the drinking water for the Seattle metro area.

Seattle Public Utilities said they are “reviewing and enhancing current protocols to include communications” such as text notifications to residents to inform them of a potential false alarm, along with having an announcement broadcast over siren speakers letting residents know “the dam is safe.”

“It is our top priority to decommission the old system and commission Carnation’s new state-of-the-art Tolt Dam Warning system as soon as possible,” the public utility agency said in a statement. “Based on feedback from residents on the new Warning System, we are making minor adjustments and anticipate decommissioning the old system and fully transitioning to the new system, which will provide better reliability and resiliency, by October.”

Ribail and Deputy Mayor Tim Harris said one of their concerns is false alarms will leave residents reluctant to take them seriously in the event of an emergency.

“It’s becoming a cry wolf situation, unfortunately,” Ribail said.

Carnation’s tourist season is about to start, which tends to draw in crowds looking to enjoy everything from pumpkin patches and Christmas trees in the community. Some days the city’s population can double with the influx of visitors.

“Another big issue there is people who are visiting from out of town, they have no idea what that siren is,” Harris said. “They would be relying on Carnation citizens to tell them what to do, and if Carnation citizens don’t believe it, why would they?”

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