FEMA

For the past seven years, people in Goldendale have worked to build what’s called a microgrid. It could serve as backup power at the local hospital and school district. Then, the Trump administration pulled millions of dollars – all the construction money. FEMA leaders say the grants didn’t lessen hazards nationwide.

Palouse area nonprofits focused on helping with emergency food and the arts have had their funding frozen or cut.

After about five years in the works, the Pierce County Council adopted a new Comprehensive Flood Hazard Management Plan that broadens the scope of what kinds of flooding the county will plan for – from coastal to urban flooding. Angela Angove is the floodplain and watershed services manager with Pierce County Planning and Public Works. She said different types of flooding are top of mind for people in the county, recalling the King Tides that caused tidal flooding last December.

In the foothills of Mt. Rainier runs the Carbon, the Puyallup and the White Rivers, meandering through towns and cities, along roadways and near homes, the paint strokes of the natural environment now surrounded by a human-built ecosystem. Once tightly restricted by levees, these rivers are beginning to again flow closer to how they would have, not adhering to the confines and rules of where humans want water to go.

Washington Rep. Steve Tharinger of the 24th district became intimately acquainted with levee setbacks when he discovered the levee protecting his house on the lower Dungeness River was not only not protecting his house, but harming the ecosystem too.“I sold my house and the five acres in a barn we had, so that we'd have more room to move that levee back and give the river more room,” Tharinger said.

Homeowners in Whatcom County have been waiting nearly two years for relief from flooding that devastated communities in northwest Washington and parts of Canada — and now, they have to wait even longer.Federal funding was supposed to come this week for 12 homeowners whose houses were destroyed during the November 2021 flooding. However, it’s been delayed, again.

A team of search and rescue personnel based out of the Pierce County Department of Emergency Management deployed to Hawaii Friday after President Joe Biden ordered federal aid to the state to help areas impacted by devastating wildfires.The 45-person FEMA team is made up of emergency responders and other professionals trained in search and rescue from Pierce and King counties.

There is a new option to escape a tsunami if you’re on the southwest coast of Washington when the Big One strikes. The Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe on Friday dedicated a 50-foot tall evacuation tower in Tokeland, Washington. Tribal leaders and the Federal Emergency Management Agency said the new tsunami refuge platform should be an example and inspiration for other vulnerable coastal communities.

Close to 200 federal, state and tribal emergency preparedness planners gathered around a giant map of the Pacific Northwest this week to rehearse and critique the federal response plan for "The Big One." The three-day Cascadia earthquake discussion exercise partially replaced a much bigger planned dress rehearsal that was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Last year, former President Trump refused to approve a routine disaster declaration for Malden because he was feuding with Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat. So that federal aid didn't start arriving until after President Biden took office and he finally signed the order.