The city of Carnation, in Washington state, has declared a state of emergency in response to multiple nuisance warnings from a local dam’s flood protection system. For the fourth time since 2020, a false warning has been issued. The dam is associated with the Tolr Reservoir, which stores roughly 30% of the drinking water used by the Seattle Metro Area.
Said Carnation Mayor Jim Ribail to CNN, “This council has been working really hard since 2020 to try to get a resolution to this situation. At this point, everybody on the city council and city staff is completely fed up with this.”
Seattle Public Utilities has indicated they are working on the issue and intend to enhance communication to include text notifications to let people more rapidly know of false alarms. Additionally, they’re working on establishing a new system. Said the SPU in a public statement, “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. 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.”
Says Ribail to CNN, “We have a city that’s basically suffering from PTSD that is scared to death that something has happened. 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.”
Source:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/01/us/carnation-false-alarms-dam-warning-system/index.html
