 The long cleanup continues
<<Sounds of crews cleaning up>> Narrator Says: More than a month after the last major weather event in King County this winter, crews are still at work cleaning it all up. Mother Nature had much in store for us this season. King County Crew Chief Gary Bachmeier Says: We got hit with just about every aspect of storm conditions, we had the wind storm, we head immediately into flooding even before we were able to finish the debris clean-up, we went into an ice event, freezing, back into another series of flooding, really exhausted the crews, they weren't able to recover and rest up, taxed the crews and their lives and yet they stayed committed, they were able to make the road safe. <<Sounds of weather>> Narrator Says: It started in early November. Sustained heavy rains caused flooding in Preston as the Raging River rose, washed out a road and threatened a nearby bridge. Most of the major rivers were at a Phase-04 flood level, which is the highest. Some rivers and streams hit flow records and when this happened; bridges, roads and anything that came near them was impacted with a major moving force. FEMA declared it a disaster. Early cost estimates to repair the damage county-wide from the flooding alone are almost at 9 million dollars. Three weeks later just after Thanksgiving, the snow hit. The cost was considerably less for this storm, only around 400-thousand, but travel was nothing short of a huge head-ache for King County residents. Not to mention county crews who were working long hours and hoping for relief. King County Crew Chief Tom Halkjar Says: I was really hoping after a couple of them, it would be over and then the next one would come, it's like the snow, at first we didn't think it would last as long as it did, and then it froze up. what did we go? Ten, 11 days I think, so it's been a long time since we had a good freeze like that. <<Sounds of crews cleaning up>> Narrator Says: Fast forward to the middle of December. Massive amounts of debris lay on the ground all over the county after a massive wind storm left about 1.1 million customers without power. Executive Sims declared a state of emergency that day. Early in the morning on Saturday the 16th, Sea-Tac Airport reported a record wind gust of 69 miles an hour. That broke the record of 65 set in 1993. Trees snapped like toothpicks all over the county closing a record 42 roads. Crews hot-footed it from one location to another blocking off areas with downed power lines, and clearing giant trees. The bill for the wind storm ended up being a little over 2 million dollars. <<Sounds of snow plow>> Narrator Says: Incredibly, we were not done with this winter’s harsh weather. January 9th, the snow and ice hit again. The sanders headed back out to battle the snow and ice as best they could. Another blanket of snow, another million dollars worth of cleaning up to do. All tolled, the storms have racked up a bill of almost 13 million dollars, a figure that is expected to rise as work continues. King County Crew Chief Tom Halkjar Says: It just seemed like never-ending, the minute we’d get going on a cleanup, let's say the windstorm, to this day we still have debris that we're picking up, the work's there, just trying to stay with it. Then you have to change your focus from flooding to windstorm to snow and ice back to a flood, back to snow and ice and still picking up storm debris from the wind. Narrator Says: No doubt in the coming years whenever harsh weather returns, it will draw comparisons to this memorable winter we’ve seen. Another valuable reminder that we are still at Mother Nature’s whim, and when she wants to strike hard, she will. King County Crew Chief Gary Bachmeier Says: I think this one stands alone because we got a little bit of everything, we've had larger storms that were for longer durations, we had a storm, an ice event maybe that was primarily just debris clean-up, this we got hit with everything, so it was a multi-faceted event.
|
