Story Photos
 Photo by Associated Press Eric Schutz with the Sumner Fire Department retrieves medication on Tuesday that Sharon Foster left behind when she and her husband, Bob, evacuated overnight because of the high waters of the Puyallup River in Sumner, Wash. |
Residents share their soggy stories
Wednesday, November 8, 2006 7:13 AM PST
By Staff
Printable version
E-mail this articleCal Walters, 79, returned from a four-day elk hunt Tuesday to find that his Sandy Bend-area home off West Side Highway had become an island --- with hundreds of gallons of motor oil spreading across the rising, hip-deep water.
An old tank in the yard of Walters' neighbor Larry Dent was leaking its into the Cowlitz River floodwaters.
The river had swept around Dent's and Walters' homes in rural Castle Rock between 2 a.m. and 7 a.m. Tuesday.
Dent, 69, who owns a construction company, said the oil must have sat in the tank for 15 years, left by former employees. Dent, whose house and shop were also flooded, learned of the damage from current employees.
"Instead of working, we started hauling stuff to safety," said Paul Cunits, 29, of Castle Rock, as a crowd of young men heaved a partly dismantled Volkswagon out of the water outside Dent's garage.
The Washington Department of Ecology will survey the river downstream for pools of oil.
Cleanup is likely to cost thousands of dollars, said WDOE spill response specialist Jon Kykendall Kykendall.
--- Michael Andersen, The Daily News
West Longview 'lakes'
Acre-sized puddles of standing water dotted West Longview Tuesday.
"This is lakefront property," joked Amsey Roseberry, who was visiting his granddaughter on Nebraska Street in West Longview. "We're planning a big duck hunt."
Water had crept into front yards and up to the underbellies of parked cars parked. Trash cans floated down the street and some Nebraska Street homes, like that of Cindy Miller and Rick Williams, had standing water in crawl spaces.
Miller and Williams moved everything off their shop floor and used sand bags to block water from draining underneath their house and from flooding their heat pump.
Shirley Clifford, another resident in the neighborhood, couldn't drive into work Tuesday because the water on the street was too high.
"I may have to swim to work," she said Tuesday morning. "I can't afford to be off."
Crystal and Joe Lloyd's back yard was one big puddle Tuesday morning.
"It looks like a swamp," Crystal Lloyd said, and the front yard wasn't any better. "I looked out my front yard and there's no way to get out."
Elsewhere in West Longview, near Robert Gray Elementary School, someone put up a "slow no wake" sign at the intersection of 46th Avenue and Ohio Street. With water lapping dangerous close to their homes, residents worried that pick-ups and SUVs cutting through the standing water could send waves into their homes.
--- Stephanie Mathieu, The Daily News
Trapped by water
Residents of Lomar Road off West Side Highway in Kelso have been without power and phone service since Saturday. With the intersection of Lomar Drive and Westover Drive under 5 feet of water, residents without Hummers or helicopters were stuck.
Tyson Connors, a Kelso High School freshman, borrowed his grandmother's raft to rescue his girlfriend, Shelby Hennessee, another Kelso freshman, who lives on Lomar Road.
By 4 p.m. Tuesday, however, the water level had receded to less than 4 feet, and Tyson's mother, Nikole Connors, was able to drive through in her husband's pickup.
Shelby said her family had been eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and she was looking forward to a hot meal at the Connors' house.
--- Janine Manny, The Daily News
There goes the car
Silver Lake's Debra Wheeler knew there was flooding around the county but had no idea she'd encounter it first-hand on her way to work Tuesday as a surgical services assistant at St. John Medical Center.
She was wrong. Really wrong.
Wheeler's car got swamped in water about 5:30 a.m. and she had to climb out the window into waist-high water to escape. Last she saw it, her Subaru Outback was floating away for parts unknown.
Wheeler, 54, said she couldn't see how high the water was near the intersection of Old Highway 99 and Ostrander Road, so she drove into the intersection only to have her car stall. Ostrander Creek had completely swamped the road, she said.
"Luckily I was smart enough to hit the button and put the windows down when I hit the water," she said. "I didn't panic and thought 'O.K. Debbie, you're going to have to swim for it.' "
Her doors wouldn't open, so Wheeler kicked off her shoes -- to help her swim -- grabbed her purse and cell phone and climbed out the window.
"I work in emergency situations all the time, so I kept my head," she said.
Once Wheeler felt her feet touch the roadway she waded to higher ground and called 911. Another car came by and Wheeler was able to signal a warning before it, too, went into the water.
The driver dropped her off at St. John wet, bedraggled and shoeless -- but on time for work, where Wheeler changed into her work scrubs and shoes and put in a full shift.
-- Barbara LaBoe, The Daily News
A rushing sound
Patti LaRose, 46, spent Tuesday waiting to hear the rushing sound again.
She first heard it at 3:30 Monday morning, while she was surfing eBay in her 23rd Avenue home in East Kelso after a late shift at North Pacific Paper Co.
LaRose looked in her garage and saw a river. Water was pouring in the back door and piling up against the front door. So she opened the garage to let the muddy river flow out.
Then the brief torrent stopped.
"I didn't call anybody, because it was just weird, you know?" she said Tuesday. "We thought maybe somebody's pool leaked."
But after a similar deluge occurred again on Monday afternoon, LaRose and her neighbors investigated.
It turned out that a tree up the hill had fallen near the head of a culvert early Monday morning, apparently interfering with water flow.
The damaged culvert proved unable to drain the pool forming in the back yard during Monday's heavy rain. When rainfall increased, the lake would apparently spill over its edge and down the hill, through several back yards and, finally, into LaRose's garage.
One house uphill from LaRose, the torrent has washed the soil from beneath Jim and Connie Gorman's home, tearing through their garden and, as Tuesday wore on and the periodic deluges continued, opening cracks in their foundation and ceiling as a corner of the building sinks.
The city of Kelso cleared the tree from the drain Tuesday afternoon.
--- Michael Andersen, The Daily News
On the car roof
As she drove up Ostrander Road Monday night to a real estate client's house to drop off paperwork, Laura Davidson saw a barrier and standing water in the 500 block. The road had been closed at about 4:30 p.m.
But ahead of her, Davidson saw another vehicle drive around the roadblock and through the water. Figuring her 2005 Tahoe would make it easily, Davidson, 27, of Longview also skirted the roadblock.
By the time she made the return trip at around 8:30 p.m., the pool of water had deepened to about 4 feet.
The Tahoe got stuck. Davidson grabbed her cell phone and called her mom in Cathlamet.
"She said there was water coming in the car," said Ladonna Davidson. "She called again and said she was on top of the car."
In a panic, Ladonna Davidson called 911, telling dispatchers her daughter was hanging on to the roof rack.
Ladonna Davidson also called her husband, Bill, who was in Seattle at the Seahawks-Raiders game. She told him about their daughter's predicament and ordered him to get home right away.
Cowlitz County sheriff's deputies and aid crews came to the rescue.
"She's not a big person. She's quite little," she said. "I guess God was with us."
Tuesday morning, Bill Davidson and some friends went looking for the car.
"They got out on a rubber raft," his wife said. "They thumped on the roof with an oar."
--- Leslie Slape, The Daily News
Finally, some sleep
It took a clearing sky to let Judi Strayer go home and get some sleep Tuesday afternoon.
"I haven't been home in two days," said Strayer, the new district manager of the Longview diking district.
Diking district employees include three office staff and four field workers, Strayer said. The task during heavy rains and flooding is to clear pumps of the garbage and weeds that cause them to shut off, she said.
"We have to keep the water flowing; we get short-staffed pretty quickly when a big storm happens," said Strayer.
She has had to call in temp workers, she said, including former employee Jack Ledbetter "on his first day of retirement."
Ledbetter was out on an excavator when his wife, Lee Ann, called to ask Strayer if she would pass on a message. Strayer held the phone up to the radio and let the Ledbetters exchange greetings on their 53rd wedding anniversarty.
"We're a small but mighty force," Strayer said.
-- Cathy Zimmerman, The Daily News
A geyser out front
Leeta Setters has lived in the Lower Columbia region all her 69 years, but this week was the first time she experienced floods firsthand.
She'd had more than enough by Tuesday afternoon.
"Oh, we are so tired," she said just before she and her husband, Bil, drove out of their Lomor Drive home to stay with their son Jeff. "I haven't slept the past two nights worrying. I was one frightened lady."
Their rental house north of Longview near the Cowlitz River didn't flood, but a popped manhole cover created a geyser just outside the Setters' yard and cut off telephones and electricity.
By Tuesday afternoon the water had dropped enough for the couple -- and their dachshund Fritizie -- to head to higher ground.
-- Barbara LaBoe, The Daily News
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