As torrential rains hit Whatcom, these isolated rural mayors led fight against floodwaters
As heavy rain pounded Whatcom County and the Nooksack River raged with a muddy turbulence that residents hadn’t seen in more than a generation, the mayors of flood-prone Everson, Nooksack and Sumas kept watch on their tiny communities well into the night of Nov. 14-15.
That’s when the river poured over its levee in Everson and sent a roiling mass of cold, swift water into the city of 2,700 residents and then washed with surprising speed across farmland and pastures toward Johnson Creek in Sumas, with its 1,700 residents on the U.S.-Canada border.
“Once it came over the levee in Everson, we know we were going to get hit,” said Sumas Mayor Kyle Christensen, who’d been awake for nearly 24 hours with volunteers and city workers, sandbagging downtown and checking the water level where Johnson Creek crosses under the Cherry Street bridge, just south of Third Street.
Worried residents also had been sandbagging all day, and a few people moved belongings off their floors and took other measures to protect their homes and possessions.
“Once it did hit us, it was more than anybody predicted,” Christensen told The Bellingham Herald. “I told my staff to hit the flood siren.”
Everson Mayor John Perry was also watching the river that Sunday, Nov. 14.
“We knew it was going to flood. We thought that if we prepared enough that we should be OK,” Perry told The Herald.
Perry went to bed at 3 a.m. Monday, Nov. 15, exhausted after sandbagging homes and businesses with city workers and volunteers from noon to midnight Sunday.
But it wasn’t enough.
Pineapple Express strikes
Steady rain began to fall the afternoon of Saturday, Nov. 13, and didn’t stop until late Monday, Nov. 15.
A National Weather Service gauge in Bellingham recorded more than a month’s worth of rain — 5.57 inches — in less than 72 hours, and nearly 7 inches of rain fell at a weather station in Sumas during that time.
It was a warm storm, the kind that meteorologists call a Pineapple Express because it carried an enormous amount of moisture from the South Pacific.
Those warmer temperatures meant heavy rain fell in the Mount Baker wilderness, where more than 3 feet of autumn snow melted into the Nooksack watershed.
It was too much runoff for the river to handle, and the flooding was even worse than a similar rain-on-snow storm that hit Jan. 31-Feb. 2, 2020.
Cities cut off
As their small communities were cut off from the rest of Whatcom County by flooded and damaged roads, the mayors literally waded into the water to direct response and rescue efforts — sometimes helping save people themselves — and later to organize cleanup and recovery work.
They were helped by city workers, their small police departments, their mostly volunteer fire departments and others who knew what to expect.
Phones at What-Comm, the 911 dispatch service, were ringing off the hook and at one point nearly 100 emergency calls were waiting, Whatcom County Sheriff Bill Elfo said.
“The small-city mayors provided extraordinary leadership, both in their own jurisdictions and out in the county to make sure we were marshaling everything we can,” Elfo said at a community meeting Nov. 24.
Rescue helicopters couldn’t fly in the storm, and many roads leading to the small towns were damaged or impassable — so Christensen, Perry and Nooksack Mayor Marshall Judy and Mayor-elect Kevin Hester gathered city workers and volunteers to address immediate needs.
Rescue efforts
“About 4:15, I got the call from our police chief that the water was overtopping Main Street and was entering City Hall,” Perry said.
Floodwaters were 3 feet deep at the time, and Perry and Police Chief Dan MacPhee rescued two women and a dog who were stuck in a car, using the Police Department’s Humvee — recently acquired free through a grant program.
“Those two were inside a car that was fully submerged,” he said. “It was quite a struggle with how cold the water was.”
They also used the Humvee to help a family of eight and their dog flee a Main Street home that was quickly filling with water.
Days later, the body of Jose Garcia, who was swept away as he clung to a tree in the pre-dawn darkness of Nov. 15, would be found behind that home.
Perry and others tried to block off roads so more people wouldn’t get stuck and to keep trucks off Main Street because they sent waves of water into homes and businesses.
But they simply didn’t have the manpower, Perry said.
Volunteers arrive
Then volunteers began to arrive — rural residents with boats, farmers with tractors and construction workers with front-end loaders and back-hoes that could defy the rushing water.
“We put out the call because of life-safety issues,” Christensen said. “The amount of people who said ‘I’m on my way,’ it was incredible. It was so encouraging to me to have people respond like that.”
Shawna DeKriek, who lives between Everson and Sumas at Badger and Van Buren roads, said the water stopped at her house and the corner was being used to stage boats and heavy equipment and emergency vehicles brought by volunteers and by sheriff’s deputies, Border Patrol officers and firefighters.
“Many citizens with very large tractors, big trucks, and boats that could get into Sumas were coming to help,” DeKriek told The Herald in an interview and through a messaging app. “They would go in and rescue someone, then bring them to a tractor, dump truck or pickup truck who would get them out of the city. My nephew, Andrew Jones, was one of these drivers who would meet the boats and bring people to a shelter, Lynden, or their families’ houses — just anywhere out of the surrounding flooded area. These same types of rescues were happening in Everson and Nooksack. The only way out was by boat or very large tractors.”
Perry said that local contractor Mike Brevik arrived with heavy equipment to assist, and Eric Drake, a member of Everson’s public works staff, remained at the city’s wastewater treatment plant to keep the pumps running and prevent the facility from being overrun.
“He was our only operator and he stayed there knowing that his house (in Sumas) was being flooded. That just goes to show the level of effort and dedication. He didn’t get back to his house for three or four days to see it,” Perry said.
Some 150 people were helped from their homes into the buckets of front-end loaders, carried to dry ground, and driven to a makeshift shelter at Nooksack Valley High School.
“It’s all kind of a blur,” Perry said. “I think I slept six hours in 72. There was a lot going on.”
One death, widespread damage
In Sumas in 2020, a few dozen homes and businesses flooded under a couple feet of water.
In 2021, more than 300 homes and businesses — including City Hall and border facilities — were inundated by water 5 to 6 feet deep.
Across Whatcom County, more than 700 buildings suffered damage as the floodwaters and landslides affected communities from Acme in the South Fork Valley to the river mouth at Lummi Nation.
Gov. Jay Inslee made a disaster declaration to provide state aid, and Whatcom County Executive Satpal Sidhu took similar measures.
Some 15 Washington counties suffered damage in the storm, and losses in Whatcom County alone could exceed $50 million, officials said.
“Everybody was in shock, going ‘What just happened?’” Perry said.
He recalled watching three school buses ferry evacuees out of town.
“It kind of hit me that all those people had just lost their homes,” he said.
But the worst part was searching for Garcia’s body the next day, and Perry was there when Garcia was found.
“The search for him was just hanging over the whole community,” Perry said.
Sense of duty
Perry and Christensen said they were driven to help their neighbors by a sense of responsibility and civic duty.
“I can’t tell people to call (911) and get some help and just go about my business. These are my friends, my neighbors,” he said. “That’s the way our community is out here.”
Perry’s home is on higher ground and avoided damage, but his grown children and their families suffered flooding and left their homes temporarily, he said.
He owns a contracting business and manages some 500 rental properties, and dozens of his tenants were displaced. As Perry coordinated recovery efforts and water receded, his wife tried to find temporary housing for their tenants.
Christensen is a real estate agent, operates a cleaning business and is also a volunteer firefighter for Fire District 14 in Sumas. He said his house got some water in his crawl space and garage but suffered no major damage.
Social media
To keep members of the community informed, and to prevent rumors from spreading, Perry and Christensen used social media to provide details about rescues, recovery and cleanup.
“The key for me was to keep people informed and give them a little hope,” Perry said about his regular Facebook posts.
Like Perry, Christensen also used social media, often several times daily.
“There’s a lot of misinformation out there. I tried to give regular updates,” he said.
Both local residents and those living outside the area could get peace of mind from first-hand information, he said.
“Keeping people informed, it helps people with their fear and anxiety,” Christensen said. “That’s what’s best for people. It helps people know the gravity of the need. It’s real for a lot of people. That’s hard to understand when you’re living somewhere that wasn’t affected.”
Cleanup, and another flood
Some 600 people went to the Everson-Nooksack communities to help remove damaged belongings and from homes the next weekend and just as many helped in Sumas.
“This is the way our community is out here,” Perry said. “It was the first time we’d gotten together as a community since COVID hit.”
And then a new storm on the weekend after Thanksgiving sent the river over its banks, flooding Everson and Sumas again.
“We set up road closures in advance. And the National Guard was there,” Perry said. “We had zero water rescues in that one.”
A final storm raised fears of a third round of flooding on Tuesday-Wednesday, Nov. 30-Dec. 1, leading Perry to write on Facebook: “The river crested overnight well below flood stage. This flood event is over.”
But for hundreds of North County residents, the hard work of filing insurance claims and rebuilding or relocating is just starting.
And on Friday, Dec. 3, Perry wrote lengthy advice about damage claims. In less than a day, the post had more than 100 likes, dozens of comments and more than 50 shares.
‘Above and beyond’
“They definitely went above and beyond,” DeKriek said. “These mayors, they were literally going into the water, putting people in the buckets (of skip loaders). They’re action guys. They know everybody. They’re both tight-knit communities.”
But both Perry and Christensen emphasized repeatedly that their communities benefited from a team effort.
“It’s not all about me. It’s about surrounding yourself with people who make you look good. It rolls down to my staff as well. We have an amazing city crew,” Christensen said.
“We were in desperation mode. We could have seen a significant loss of life,” he said. “We’ve seen people volunteer in the rain and cold to help their neighbors. That spirit continued throughout the entire effort.”
Chief Jerry DeBruin of Fire District 14 said he saw “great leadership” through the crisis among city officials and emergency responders alike.
“Our resources for help are pretty limited. We have to make do with what we have,” DeBruin told The Herald.
“(Christensen has) been out there right alongside the people,” and city officials, public works, police and firefighters, he said.
“They put in 24 hours a day through this, not even going home. They slept in their rigs. The volume and intensity of the water caught us all off-guard,” DeBruin said.
