SULTAN, Wash. — There are road closures all over Sultan off of Highway 2, but Ben Howard Road was so flooded Tuesday night that emergency crews had a hard time getting to the scene where a tree crushed a car, killing the man inside.
"When we got there, the car was still running, the music was still playing, and the top of the tree was still on the vehicle. With the assistance of some bystanders, we were able to lift the tree off the car and then we cut the top off to access him and found he was deceased,” explained Sultan Fire Chief Merlin Halverson.
Halverson said it was far too dangerous for his firefighters to stay long.
"Probably one of the most dangerous places you can be, when it's raining and the wind is blowing,” he told KIRO 7 of Ben Howard Road.
He said investigators could have been trapped there.
Countless more trees have fallen—some into power lines starting fires, and many others over roads.
"I know the road is blocked in several places,” Halverson said.
West of Sultan, in Everett, Bill and Meggie Young tell us they were nearly killed.
They were standing in their kitchen Tuesday morning when a massive tree came crashing through their roof.
"If we were on that bed, we would have been dead. The tree and all the roof is laying on that bed. We would have been dead," Bill Young said.
The bed isn’t even visible under all the debris.
Back in Sultan, the situation is getting scarier by the minute.
The chief says if water continues to fill up nearby Spada Lake, the Sultan River could flood the town; it happened ten years ago.
"2006 was worse, but we'll see how bad it gets. We don't know,” concluded Halverson.
KIRO
