CARNATION, Wash. — People in the town of Carnation are furious after emergency sirens sounded when they weren’t supposed to. The alarm happened mid-morning Wednesday, and those who live along the Tolt River and the city are speaking out.
At roughly 10:20 a.m., Candice Hazjan shot cellphone footage that captured a loud siren followed by an automated voice recording announcing the all-clear. She said this came 20 minutes after a similar siren notified residents to evacuate due to the failure of the Tolt River Dam.
“I grabbed my dogs, my cat, and I grabbed my brother's ashes, that’s it,” Hazjan said.
This is not something the residents of Carnation, a town downriver of the Tolt Reservoir, are taking lightly—should the dam break, they’re promised “catastrophic damage.”
“To have a continual process where we’re getting these false alarms knowing that – is it a false alarm? Is it a system malfunction or is it actually a failure and somebody is just not giving us the right information,” said Russ Foley, a Carnation resident.
Residents claim this is the eighth false alarm in four years—a problem that first started in 2020. That warning took more than an hour to correct, and in that time, so many people left for higher ground that Hazjan was stuck in a small town traffic jam.
“I got stuck on the main road,” Hazjan said. “We thought that everything was gone,” she continued.
The City of Seattle owns the damn and Seattle Public Utilities operates it. They said they are investigating the cause of the alarm but assure the public that the structure is, in fact, safe.
The city held an emergency meeting to address the sirens Wednesday night. There, community members were able to voice their concerns during public comment and officials announced the executive action that will be taken.
Carnation Mayor Jim Rabail said the city will take executive action demanding opposition of recommissioning of the dam, push for the dam to be decommissioned completely, work to have the current emergency system deactivated and put new procedures in place. The city wants to work with the King County Sheriff's Office and Eastside Fire and Rescue to have people in town work with SPU to activate the lights and sirens for an emergency.
Rabail also directed staff to seek legal counsel against the City of Seattle and SPU.
“We shouldn’t have to wait 21, 38, 45 minutes or go to Facebook to find out what’s going on,” said frustrated, longtime Carnation resident Collienne Becker.
“All of these things should have happened in a way shorter timeline. It should not have taken 21 minutes for the all-clear alarm to go,” said Stephanie Foley, another Carnation resident.
With the dam intact, it seems that those who live downstream have reached their breaking point.
“You basically have 40 minutes before your entire life is gone,” Russ Foley said.