Spencer Jack and his dad are back home in Washington, after Thanksgiving in Utah. David, Theo and Ruby and their parental units are also back in Washington, after Thanksgiving in Arizona.
Spencer Jack and his dad got back to Mount Vernon just in time to help the valley deal with the Skagit River in flood mode for the first time this flood season. I began seeing drone videos of the flooding Skagit yesterday, with those videos showing the Skagit in the downtown zone of Mount Vernon, which is like New Orleans, as in, below river level when the river goes high.
A few years ago Mount Vernon decided to copy a bigger town in the south called Fort Worth when Mount Vernon developed its virtual Skagit River Vision, only with Mount Vernon's vision being an actual legitimate economic development scheme, combined with an actual vitally needed flood control scheme.
Minus corruption and nepotism. In other words, Mount Vernon did not give the unqualified son of the local congressperson the job of director of the Skagit River Vision, in order to motivate the parent to secure federal funds to pay for the project. Mount Vernon did what towns wearing their big city pants do, as in mostly paid for the project itself and hired qualified adults to oversee the project.
Hence the Skagit River Vision's timely completion.
As in, unlike Fort Worth Trinity River Vision's ill-planned scheme, Mount Vernon's is up and running. And, apparently, currently saving downtown Mount Vernon from a disastrous flood.
Prior to the Skagit River Vision and its flood control aspect, when a flood threatened downtown Mount Vernon a literal army of locals sandbagged for hours to build a wall to hold the river back.
Post Skagit River Vision a Dutch-designed flood wall can now be put in place in a couple hours by a handful of workers. The new flood wall is what you see holding back the river in Spencer Jack's photo documentation above.
On the right side of that flood wall is another aspect of the Skagit River Vision, a long riverwalk type attraction, complete with a plaza, or two. I do not think, unlike Fort Worth, the plazas have Japanese car company sponsors.
I remember twice helping sandbag downtown Mount Vernon. The most dramatic incident was in the early 1990s. A warm front had melted the mountain snowpack. The lowlands were drenched in hours of downpour. All the rivers of Western Washington went into flood mode. One of Washington's floating bridges sank.
I was at home, in far east Mount Vernon, high above the river, watching Seattle TV cover the situation live in Mount Vernon. About one in the morning the news started to make the situation sound dire. The National Guard was arriving. All possible help was being asked to come to downtown Mount Vernon to the staging area by the library.
I woke up my house and soon the occupants were at the downtown library, which was a beehive of action. Soon we found ourselves part of a bucket brigade of sandbaggers, building a sandbag wall where today there is that Dutch flood wall.
At some point maximum sandbag height was reached. We were told to retreat, and that the anticipated flood crest would be about 11 that morning. At that point in time, myself and many others, flooded the high points above downtown Mount Vernon to see if the sandbag wall was going to save downtown Mount Vernon.
We could see the water start to crest over the sandbags.
And then, suddenly, the water level dropped, instantly, it seemed.
What just happened everyone wondered.
Soon all hell was breaking loose. Sirens, helicopters in the air. I do not remember how long it was before we learned the dike protecting Fir Island breached, flooding the island, and taking pressure off the river, hence the sudden drop.
For those of you reading this in Fort Worth. Fir Island is what is known as a real island, surrounded by water, two sides of which are forks of the Skagit River, the third side being the Skagit Bay of Puget Sound.
And there are two bridges connecting the Skagit mainland with Fir Island, both built over the rapid moving water of the Skagit River. Neither promoted as being signature bridges. Both built in a fraction of the time Fort Worth has been spending trying to build three simple little bridges over dry land to connect the Fort Worth mainland to an imaginary island, which could never suffer a catastrophic dike breach such as what Fir Island suffered. Twice. Because Fort Worth's imaginary Panther Island will never be what any sane person would call an island ....
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