With water still rising, responders rescue Nisqually Valley residents who didn’t evacuate

Rescuers with Lacey Fire District 3 and the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office brought boats and an armored SWAT rescue vehicle to the Nisqually Valley Friday to rescue residents as water continued to rise, rendering some roads impassable and flooding structures.

The river reached 12.09 feet Friday morning near McKenna, according to Thurston County Emergency Management data. Flood stage is 10 feet. Flooding began Thursday, after Tacoma Power announced it would increase its release from the LaGrande Dam upstream.

Nobody’s life was in danger, the fire department said Friday, but people who opted to stay at home despite evacuation notices found themselves needing help out.

Battalion Chief Pat Harn said there were about five people to rescue in a housing development adjacent to Old Pacific Highway Southeast — water had risen 1 to 2 feet, blocking any routes in and out, at midday.

After finishing that effort, Harn said another priority was Riverbend Campground, which sits between the Nisqually River and Medicine Creek, off Durgin Road Southeast.

Those areas were part of an evacuation advisory Thursday.

The Sheriff’s Office knocked on about 400 doors Thursday to issue “Level Three” evacuation notices in the areas expected to see the highest impact and distributed “Level Two” fliers in the surrounding area to put those residents on notice, according to Thurston County spokesperson Meghan Porter.

Responders expected water to stay at the same level overnight, but it rose, according to Harn. There were deputies in the area overnight, then residents woke up this morning and started asking for help out, Harn said.

“The bottom line is there’s no immediate life threat, there’s just people that decided to stay in,” Harn said. “We’re going in to get animals and people out so they can get out, because we don’t know if it’s going to keep rising or not.”

Victor Finau, 17, lives with his family in a residence on Conine Avenue Southeast, where water on the road was as deep as 4 feet in places. Finau says his family wasn’t warned, and it was dry when they went to bed Thursday.

When they woke up Friday and found water, they evacuated in their van, he said, but the van died after traversing through the water. His three sisters and one brother were at the Nisqually Youth Center, but we wasn’t sure where he’d go.

Along with Lacey Fire District 3 and the Thurston County Sheriff’s Office, the Southeast Thurston Fire Authority, Nisqually Tribe, and local and state emergency management departments have all responded, said county spokesperson Porter. The county estimates about 700 to 1,000 residents could be affected by the flooding.

In a tweet about 1 p.m. Friday, Fire District 3 said rising water levels and high tide around 3 p.m. would make work “increasingly difficult” as welfare checks and rescues continued through the afternoon.

Tacoma Power’s release from the LaGrande Dam never reached the 17,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) mark, as was planned, according to Tacoma Public Utilities spokesperson Carrie Mantle. And as of Friday, the utility planned to decrease the release from 15,000 cfs to 11,000 cfs by 1 p.m.

Thurston County won’t see any relief from that change until about 9 p.m. Friday, Porter wrote in an email to The Olympian.

“They expect the water (to) recede some, but it won’t make the roads passable and doesn’t necessarily mean it will stop structural flooding,” Porter wrote in an email. “It is still good news that they are already reducing.”

This story was originally published February 7, 2020 at 2:05 PM.