This story was originally published in Amanda Monthei’s Substack.
It’s Monday, noon, at an ad-hoc flood response coordination center in Sumas, Washington, which under normal circumstances—that is, when the town wasn’t recently underwater—is the Sumas Advent Christian Church. Mud-drenched volunteers in high-vis vests, commercial fishing bibs and knee-high muck boots filter into the building while on a brief break from the dirty work of flood response, and scarf down sloppy joes and hot dogs from paper plates as they await a new assignment. Trickling in amongst the volunteers are families, some of them with young children in muddy boots and pajamas, who have come to the church to speak with case managers about their first steps towards recovery. Outside, trucks and dump trailers are parked along the road, ready to haul river-soaked drywall, insulation, couches and belongings from the hundreds of homes nearby that were impacted by recent flooding.
Just a few days ago, this community on Washington’s northwest border was under feet of glacial river water in places, a result of a deluge of rain that arrived alongside unseasonably warm temperatures the previous week. The resulting combination of rain and snowmelt pushed river flows to record levels up and down the Northwest coast, both on coastal rivers like the Nooksack, Skagit and Snoqualmie, but also on the east side of the Cascades, where communities like Stehekin, Leavenworth and Cashmere also experienced catastrophic flooding, power outages and post-fire debris flows in recently burned areas. And flood impacts weren’t even limited to just the Pacific Northwest—the storm arrived off the Pacific with enough power to sustain catastrophic rain and wind impacts as far inland as northwest Montana.
Here in Sumas and its neighboring communities of Nooksack and Everson, thousands of volunteers just spent their weekend carrying waterlogged items from impacted homes to dump trailers, and pulling wet insulation out of strangers’ crawlspaces—some of the first steps in flood response. Today, the folks running the coordination center seem to be allowing themselves a brief, bated moment of calm as immediate response needs appear to be transitioning to longer-term recovery needs. The work is far from done, of course, but is shifting away from immediate tasks like helping homeowners move waterlogged belongings and building materials to the street for pickup, to more long-term and involved tasks that require utility and insurance companies, paperwork, bleach, and probably every available crawlspace pump in the county.
Impacted homeowners make their way into the Sumas Advent Church on Monday, December 15. (Photo by Amanda Monthei.)
While I recently moved to Missoula, Montana, for grad school, I’ve spent the last seven years in Bellingham, and made it back to town to visit friends just before the worst of the rain arrived on Tuesday, December 9. By Friday, December 12, floodwaters in north Whatcom County were finally receding, and response and recovery efforts were promptly underway.
Back in 2021, I had come to this same church in Sumas to report on that year’s record-breaking flood event. Walking through the front door of the church on this trip, I suddenly remembered that the floorboards had been coated in a thin layer of river silt last time I was here. Today, there’s no silt or indication of flooding in the church itself—just muddy boot prints—and I consider that this is a strange but no less useful metric by which to assess how high the water got. Much like in 2021, the church became an impromptu operations center as soon as flood waters receded enough to access it.
This community, which is situated in an old lake bed and within the Nooksack floodplain, is no stranger to these historic rain and flood events; many families in this area are currently experiencing their second such flood in just four years. One volunteer told me that his friend, who lives in the heaviest-hit section of Sumas, had been using patio furniture in his living room for years after the 2021 event, unable to afford new furniture. They’d finally been able to purchase new couches a few months ago, which were again destroyed by floodwaters this week.
Last time I was here, I spoke to fire chiefs and other community members who expressed a complicated relationship with the place they call home, and who subtly questioned the sustainability of towns built in the historic floodplains of rivers that are so susceptible to extreme flooding. They’d lamented how this was the second or third time in their lifetime that they’d seen their communities underwater. They questioned how their towns would fare if it happened again.
Just four years later, we’re seeing the answer to that question in action.
One thing remained unchanged between the 2021 and 2025 flood responses: floodwaters still devastated hundreds of homes and businesses in the Nooksack watershed (not to mention dozens of other places across the Pacific Northwest), meaning families—including some that were still recovering from the 2021 floods—were now facing the same challenges of flood recovery all over again. They’re getting rid of three-year-old couches. Waterlogged flooring, trim, drywall and insulation once again need to be ripped out and taken to the dump. They are again having to go through the rigamarole of dealing with their insurance companies—that is, if they had flood insurance. Their kids’ toys need to be replaced again. In the days following the worst of the flooding, flood victims in community Facebook groups were discussing how to talk to their kids about the flooding, how to help them be resilient and not afraid of more floods after experiencing two historic events in such short succession.
The devastation is familiar and undoubtedly catastrophic, but the outpouring of support has been familiar, too—people were ready to help flood victims, and quickly showed up en masse to do so.
The one major difference between the 2021 floods and the 2025 floods was in the actual organization of this immense response effort and the coordination of the resources and volunteers who showed up to help. Anyone who was around for both floods seemed quick to point out that the response was more streamlined this time around, an outcome that can be directly tied to the development of the Whatcom County Long Term Recovery Group (WLTRG), formerly called Whatcom Strong.
“After the 2021 floods, we realized that government support is very slow,” Kyle Cristensen, who was the mayor of Sumas during the 2021 floods, and is now the director of WLTRG. “We realized we needed to get [support] to people like, right now.”
This points to an essential function of long term recovery groups like the one in Whatcom County: they serve as a critical bridge between local communities and the federal, state, private and nonprofit entities that swoop into affected communities to provide funding, response and support in the days and weeks after disasters. Without this bridge, it’s exceedingly cumbersome to get the funding and resources from these larger entities directly to the people, businesses, and entities that need that support the most.
Folks who are willing to get their hands dirty during disaster response are critical—but the advantage of having people coordinating those efforts behind the scenes can’t be overstated. Here, Whatcom Long Term Recovery Group director Kyle Christensen thumbs through pages of local homeowner information to figure out where to send more volunteers. (Photo by Amanda Monthei.)
Following its development in the aftermath of the 2021 floods, WLTRG has been able to help affected communities and homeowners in the years-long recovery process, including through the dissemination of FEMA Flood Mitigation Assistance funding to help some homeowners elevate their foundations on their homes. Over the last week, though, WLTRG has been at the very center of the flood response—coordinating volunteers, accepting and dispersing funding and donations, connecting impacted homeowners with case managers, and working directly alongside other responding county, state, federal and nonprofit agencies.
“We’re more prepared this time, for sure, but it’s still hard,” Cristensen said. “Now we have structure, we have a plan. But even though we’re more prepared as an organization, it’s always hard for families that are getting hit again, or families that are just seeing damage for the first time.”
Long term recovery groups are becoming increasingly prevalent in communities across the country, and particularly in areas that are frequently impacted by wildfires, post-fire disasters like landslides and debris flows, as well as flooding and even major freeze or wind events. These groups often have a few core (occasionally salaried) members, but are designed to expand and contract with available agency employees, community members and volunteers based on need during and after disasters.
“[Our organization] is a way to provide both immediate support while we wait for government funding, and it’s a way to actually provide that long term recovery support,” Cristensen said, adding that long term recovery groups are made up of mostly local folks and community members who can provide one-on-one administrative and emotional support to people right in their own communities. “There are so many benefits to having an organization like ours that’s structured and well organized, because it’s a gap that needs to [be filled] after a disaster…whether that’s flooding, fire, earthquakes, freezing, temperatures, hot temperatures.”
Long term recovery groups, at their core, hinder on a sort of “I know a guy” model of disaster recovery. Oh, you need help moving sandbags? I know a guy. Oh you need an excavator? I know a guy. Oh you need someone who can help you find child care while you rip the insulation out of your flooded crawlspace? I know a guy (and, of course, this is all interchangeable with “I know a lady.”) It’s an organizational structure that essentially aims to formalize the relationships that are critical in disaster recovery—whether that’s someone to talk to about what paperwork to do, someone to help you rip out your floorboards, someone to watch your kid, or someone to give you a hot meal when you’re overwhelmed and don’t have a functional kitchen. What makes them particularly effective is that these relationships and the broader organizational structure of the recovery group are established and outlined before disaster, rather than in the midst of one. They’re ready to mobilize the second that they’re needed, can quickly adapt their ranks to the needs of the impacted communities, and can nimbly and effectively disperse funding and resources precisely where and when they’re most needed.
“We know where the needs are, and when we get money, [we can immediately] get that in the hands of people who need it,” Christensen said. “Everything is slow with government funding, so we’re the bridge right now in helping people until government funding kicks in, which could be months from now.”
A few days before my trip to Sumas, I’d spent a day in the neighboring community of Nooksack, where flood waters had receded more quickly than in Sumas and where recovery efforts began in earnest on Friday, December 12.
This was less of a reporting day and more of a volunteering day for me. My friend Bridget and I arrived in the morning, signed a volunteer waiver and awaited an assignment at Nooksack Valley Church, where we met up with a few friends who happened to be available to volunteer that day as well.
While we waited, I watched as other volunteers loitered around the room sipping coffee, some with muddy boots and pants indicating they’d already been out working in homes. Two tables on one side of the room hosted two caseworkers, busy with homeowners who were just coming back to their homes after evacuations. One caseworker was providing assistance in Spanish for some of the many Spanish-speaking families that live in this area, which has a large migrant farmworking community. Next to the case managers was a child care coordinator, an essential but often-overlooked function of disaster response, when parents need child-free time to tackle the endless administrative tasks of individual disaster recovery.
Church members and community members at the Sumas Advent Church serve warm meals to volunteers as they take a break from flood recovery. (Photo by Amanda Monthei.)
Within a few minutes, we got an assignment to help a family clear their belongings out of the main floor of their home in a nearby neighborhood. The first house we were sent to had already called their insurance company and taken photos for insurance purposes, and their efficiency made it clear that they’d been around for the flood in 2021. We went straight to work clearing their belongings out of the house, and were even instructed to begin pulling out their carpet, trim and drywall.
By the time we were done at that house, the cul-de-sac we were working in was lined with lifted work trucks and dump trailers, and nearly every home had people outside working. A group of young boys and their mom were roving around offering volunteers banana bread and snickerdoodle cookies. We found a house where one man was working solo, taking things one by one out of his garage. We asked if he wanted help and he accepted our offer, and we began hauling wet cardboard boxes and soaked golf bags, shoes, tools, and other items into the driveway. After removing most of the wet stuff from his garage, we paused to chat with him a bit more.
He mentioned that he’d gotten there only 30 minutes prior, and that his wife and kids were still in Bellingham with the friends they’d stayed with after being evacuated two days prior. He said that they’d purchased the house in 2022, after the previous floods, and had moved here from California soon after. He told us that the real estate agent and bank had assured him that the 2021 flood was record breaking, and that similarly catastrophic floods were exceptionally rare. And here we were, mopping silt out of his garage, his white car displaying a muddy high water line at about midway up the driver’s-side door.
It was here that the discrepancy between previous flood victims and those who were new to the experience became abundantly clear. While the previous homeowner was ready to put us to work just hours after returning home from evacuation, this homeowner was unsure of where to even begin the recovery process. He said he hadn’t yet called his insurance company, so we paused our garage clearance mission and told him to go chat with the case managers at the church.
Case management is probably the most critical service that long term recovery groups provide, both in the immediate response period when families are coming home and surveying the damage, and throughout the recovery process.
Because they’re often members of the affected community (or other nearby areas), they can provide an emotional connection to people as they begin the tedious process of filing paperwork for their insurance companies or to receive federal assistance. The fact that case managers are attached to a nonprofit rather than a government agency is also helpful—some disaster victims feel more comfortable speaking with a local nonprofit over a state or federal agency. The relationships that are developed between case managers and victims are essential in streamlining the process of receiving and distributing resources and assistance; beyond that, these one-on-one relationships replace what has long been an impersonal web of phone calls, online forms and back and forth emails.
“Our disaster case managers are really the heroes of our organization,” Christensen said. “They’re a single point of contact with families that have received damage, which helps us [better understand] how we can support them through volunteer efforts or how the rest of our team can assist based on what the needs are.
“This is probably the biggest help for families who are confused on where to go and just overwhelmed with the process, ‘cause you have all these people saying, “I can help you.” And I think what we provide with the long term recovery group is that comfort level, where you’re not just talking to somebody on the phone, you’re not just emailing somebody back and forth. It’s that personal connection that helps people emotionally.”
Many of the conversations I engaged in while in the flood zone were with folks who were grappling with their previous assertion that this wouldn’t happen again, or at least not for a long time. In 2021, the precedent for this level of flooding had been previously set in the early 90s, which the older folks I had spoken with cited as the last time they’d experienced a similarly devastating flood. Now, the precedent wasn’t 30 years ago but only four. This is recent memory. Volunteers and homeowners alike seemed to be facing a new reality—that, in fact, this all could happen again, and was happening again, so what do we do now?
It feels overwhelming to consider what it would look like to take this new reality at face value—after all, how do you sell a home that’s flooded twice in four years? Can we expect people to uproot their lives and move away when they barely have the means to purchase new furniture years after a flood? How can we possibly coexist with a floodplain that is almost certain to keep flooding at similarly devastating levels?
Beyond the individual- and community-level concerns are concerns over the availability and effective dispersal of federal funding to both prepare for and recover from events like this. FEMA disaster preparedness funding programs (e.g. Hazard Mitigation Grants and the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities Program) have long been positioned to provide funding for disaster preparedness work, but these programs have been repeatedly targeted by the Trump Administration via cuts and outright cancellations. In April, the administration cancelled the Building Resilience Infrastructure and Communities Program as well as the Flood Mitigation Assistance Program, getting rid of some $3.3 billion in disaster preparedness funding just months after disasters like the Los Angeles Fires and Hurricane Helene, and months before the catastrophic, deadly flooding in central Texas. However, a federal judge just last week ruled that the Trump administration cannot cancel this program. Communities throughout Washington, including in Sumas, have utilized these federal grant programs to recover from and build resilience to future flood disasters, generally through programs that pay for homeowners to elevate their foundations, or by using funding to purchase property in at-risk floodplains to prevent further development.
Solutions to such complex, layered problems can feel convoluted and out-of-reach to many of us. But we do have agency: we can start by supporting politicians that understand the importance of maintaining federal disaster funding and assistance. We can ensure, to whatever extent we’re capable, that federal, state and county-level entities are prioritizing disaster preparedness. Perhaps your advocacy begins by seeing if your county has a Long Term Recovery Group, and encouraging your local office of emergency management to create one if not.
One of the most accessible steps we can all take in better withstanding disasters is developing organizations—long term recovery groups among them—that create a culture of collaboration and resilience before disasters happen. We all have the potential to spur a paradigm shift within our friend groups, communities and counties that hinges not on whether disaster will happen again, but on knowing and accepting that it will, and collectively reimagining a future not of constant loss and devastation, but of coexistence, resilience, and renewal.
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