Six Billion Gallons

That’s approximately how much water has fallen over the Seattle area in the past few days, according to the Seattle PI. Flooding all over the place, bridges and roads washed out, I-5 is closed between Seattle and Portland forcing a detour through Yakima…crazy stuff.

Outside of leaks taking out a few ceiling tiles at my store in the mall, neither Prairie nor I have personally seen any of the more dramatic effects of the storm. Apparently we got off fairly lucky — the PI mentions a few people in our area of town that didn’t fare so well.

“It felt like we were on the Titanic,” said Randy Carter, who awoke at 4 a.m. Monday to lights from utility trucks and the realization that his apartment in the Jackson Greens complex in North Seattle was flooded to evacuation levels with 3 feet of water.

[…]

In Seattle, where rescue crews were forced to carry people from hard-hit homes in the Northgate area and then shelter them on Metro buses, Mayor Greg Nickels said flatly that the city’s infrastructure had been unable to cope with the deluge.

“The systems that this city was built around — the draining systems, the transportation systems — simply were not built to handle this kind of rainfall,” he said.

By late afternoon Monday, nearly 6 billion gallons of rain — the rough equivalent of six Green Lakes — had fallen.

Four apartment buildings, housing some 50 people and their pets near Midvale Avenue North and North 107th Street were evacuated and another four were similarly affected, Seattle Fire Department spokeswoman Helen Fitzpatrick said.

“The flooding is up to 10 feet deep in some areas,” she said.

In one building, the parking garage was almost completely under water, cars were nearly floating with rain up to their windshields and firefighters were carrying residents out.

The PI has a photo gallery of some of the effects around town.

(photo by Liembo)