I'd like to thank all the people who sent their well wishes, offers of aid and support or inquired about how I was doing... OK, just kidding. I'm sure most of you don't know I live in Western Washington, or that I even post here. You might not have even heard about the flooding that hit the North West. I figured since this is one of the few message boards I'm active on I'd post a quick rundown of recent events.
To those of you who can't read more than one or two paragraphs without your eyes glazing over, feel free to skip to the end.
Dec. 1st/2nd there was a large amount of snowfall here, about 4 or 5 inches. Dec. 2nd/3rd there was very heavy rainfall which also melted all the snow. I don't have concrete numbers for my area, but one of the reports says 14 inches of rain and I know in some areas nearby the rainfall was being measure in feet, not inches. The ground was already saturated, so there wasn't anywhere for the water to go but down.
Early Monday morning I was downstairs in our den/family room/place with the TV and computer. I checked the bedroom down there and noticed there was some water on the floor, but it didn't seem too bad so I threw some towels down and figured I'd keep checking on it. A half-hour or so later I was sitting at the computer when I decided I'd better check the room again. I moved my foot when I went to stand up and heard a splash, I moved my foot around and sure enough there was water in the family room. I turned on all the lights and checked the floor and there was a small river flowing from the bedroom, I went into the bedroom and the entire floor was pretty much covered. Starting to panic a bit, I headed to the other side of the basement to the utility room to see if I could find anything to keep the water back. I didn't even make it into the utility room before I started splashing in more water, the utility room was flooding too and sending more water into the family room.
I picked up as much water damage susceptible stuff as I could and carried it to safety before alerting my parents and starting mopping/bailing operations. About an hour after I first noticed water in the basement, the entire floor was pretty much covered. The water continued to rise, getting up to nearly an inch of water in the family room. Using buckets, mops, wet vacs and towels, we worked through the morning and into the afternoon to get most of the water out. We did lose power for a few hours during the day Monday, but for all the damage that was done our "public utility district" did an incredible job keeping power up during the storm and restoring it when it finally went out. Our phone company on the other hand wasn't so efficient, we lost phone service when the power was out and it wasn't restored for several days.
To make matters worse, it turned out we were literally cut off from the outside world. A bridge on the main road from our area to the rest of Washington State (we live on a peninsula) was washed out, the bridge from the closest town to the rest of the state was shut down and pretty much the entire roadway out was washed out. The only other one or two routes out were also impassable. We couldn't get out, Fire/EMS, Police, Rescue Personal and Aid Workers couldn't get in. We hunkered down and waited it all out, fortunately the damage here wasn't as severe as some other areas. The Fire District was finally able to get an off-road vehicle through a logging road into our area Monday night so they could offer some aid for those who needed it. The National Guard showed up to and did a lot before they were called back to other parts of the county.
Later in the week, the county was able to open up a road from the peninsula to the main town on our side of the county (also the "gateway" so to speak to the rest of the state), so we were finally able to head to the store and get some food and supplies. The Salvation Army set up shop at the local community center so I was able to get some bottled water and a Red Cross flood cleanup kit.
So we're now able to reach civilization, but with the bridge being out the once 10-15 minute drive is now a 45 minute drive. And half of that isn't on what might be considered an actual road. It's basically an off-road vehicle trail. It's dirt with the occasional patch of gravel, two-way but not two lane and driving down it with a normal car is more than a little scary. Lots of blind curves, water flowing across the road in some areas earlier in the week, pretty decent drops off cliffs a couple of feet off the side of the road and a more than a few rednecks tearing down it in monster trucks. It sucks, but it will have to do since they wont be able to install a temporary bridge on the main road until next week at the earliest. On the plus side however, I'm now considering a career in off-road rally racing. I've gone down the road entirely too fast and I shudder to think what kind of damage I might have done to the car, but it can certainly be and adrenaline rush.
The region was pretty devastated but my family and I were really lucky to make it out with minimum loss. A man about my age was killed really close to here when a mudslide breached the walls of his bedroom and buried him alive. Compared to that some minor flooding and a lot of inconvenience are nothing. Last I had heard there were 5 more dead from the storm, plus 3 snowboarders still missing, a missing local man and other missing that haven't been added to the tally yet. Houses and cars were swept away, businesses were destroyed, pets and livestock were killed and there was no warning that all this was going to happen.
Our community did an absolutely incredible job handling the unexpected flooding. The Fire District especially has been getting the job done from when they received the first 911 call to now, they also were the ones coordinating the emergency response from the county to the peninsula. Despite just starting to reform the Search and Rescue Team, the Sheriff's Office was able to get rescuers out to where people were in trouble and pluck them out. Like I said the Salvation Army is at the community center with food, water, clothing, cleaning supplies, household supplies etc. and were ready to help anyone who was displaced.
I'm sorry I wasn't able to get any pictures or video of the flooding, I don't know if it was something in the water or the stress, but I've been feeling kind of sick ever since the flood. I had a severe headache that lasted an entire week which was a bit scary. I've just now gotten the energy to type all this out. I will try to get down to the bridge today to try and take a couple of pics though. In the mean time these links will have to do.
All local:
http://www.king5.com has a special on the flood that you can watch on the front page. They show the bridge on the main road that was washed out as well as our fire district trying to reach people on our side that were cut off.
http://www.masoncountydailynews.com has a lot of good info specifically about our county, if you click on SUMMARY OF FIRE DISTRICT TWO EMERGENCY RESPONSES (it's a .doc) that has a really good timelime of the emergency response.
http://kitsapsun.com/december2007_storm/ Has some good pics and articles, the ones from North Mason are about our area.
Mason County, North Mason, Hood Canal, the Tahuya Peninsula and Haven Lake are the local areas in ascending order by proximity to my house. Tahuya, Belfair and Dewatto are more or less the local towns in ascending order by proximity to my house. The Tahuya River Bridge is the bridge on Tahuya-Belfair Road that was washed out, cutting us off from the outside world. So if you see or hear about any of those, that's me.
Think that will do for now, if you managed to make it down this far, thanks for reading.
So glad you are okay! That looks terrible, but extremely familiar! I lived in Olympia a few years back and there was a terrible ice storm in '97 or '98(?) that was unbelievable. Cars where frozen in ice up to the doors!! Then when it all melted....I really feel for you!
Damn
I hope you dry out soon
It was starting to get dark when I got down there, so the pics are a bit blurry. They have been working on it for about a week so it doesn't look quite the same as during the storm, you can see some quick video from the day after though below.
What you see when you go down the road. That was our route to our jobs, school, grocery store, gas station... basically how we got to town and the route we took to wherever else we needed to go.
A view of where the bridge was. That flat part that I took the picture from is actually a new road that is being built alongside the old one. They're going to put up a temporary bridge so we can get across while they work on building a new bridge. The temporary bridge wont be up for a while though.
A view of the actual road before the washed out part. As you can see there's a tree there at the moment. You can see a car on the roadway in the background. You turn at the end of that curve and you're on our street, that's how close we were.
A look at the river itself. It's usually more like a stream, it's still running a little high. During the summer you could walk across without getting your feet wet. This was taken from the edge of the road. Before the storm another step forward and I would have been on the bridge, now another step forward and I would have taken a bumpy but fast trip into the river itself.
The other side of the road. The road on the left was the bridge, the one on the right is the new one for the temporary bridge.
A look at the actual road right before it disappears. You can see a little bit of the white line still there.
After I took the last one I turned around and took an eye-level shot, this is what was captured.
Here's a video about our area:
http://www.king5.com/video/index.html?nvid=198021
These might only work with ie by the way.
This one has a shot of the bridge:
http://www.king5.com/video/index.html?nvid=198431
Thought I would end on the lighter side of natural disasters. Why did the Salmon cross the road?
http://www.king5.com/video/index.html?nvid=198321
My goodness! Glad you are ok! I was in Houston when it flooded in 2001 because of Tropical Storm Allison. Flooding is no joke.
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