Welcome to the KIMA TV special, The Flood of 96, a report on the Northwest flooding.
The Flood of 96 is probably sponsored by McGuire Lumber, Warning Archivopractic, and Wiley Hurston Associates.
And now, KIMA News Director, T.J. Close.
Good evening. Eastern Washington and Idaho were among the hardest hit from last week's flooding.
Tonight, KIMA News, in conjunction with Sister Stations, KEPR Television in the Tri-Cities, and KLEW-TV in Lewiston, Idaho,
look back on the worst flooding ever to hit our area. We have three reports. The first focuses on the Yakima Valley.
It all began innocently enough with a heavy snowfall in mid-January.
It was followed by bitter cold, more than 20 below zero in some valley areas.
The winter chill left the Yakima River choked with ice and a flood potential when the thaw came.
The cold snap broke February 5th, starting with freezing rain and lots of accidents.
Snoqualmie Pass was shut down because of slides and runoff. Hundreds of truckers were stranded at Ellensburg in North Bend.
The valley snowpack turned to slush, and there was water everywhere.
KIMA reporter Mike Melman was dispatched to White Swan, where serious flooding had broken out.
This sandbag levee is the only thing keeping water out of Orit Jackson's White Swan home.
Many of her Signal Peak road neighbors have evacuated, but she remains optimistic.
It's an inconvenience, but it's Mother Nature at her worst, so we just have to do the best that we can.
Amid warming temperatures, heavy rains pelted the valley, turning swelling creeks and streams into raging torrents of water.
The rising water forced the evacuation of homes and businesses, including Ramber's Park.
Despite living here for six years, Sunny Beeman was shocked when glee fire officials knocked on her door.
I feel like giving up. That's what I feel like. I keep imposing on my kids, too.
Hey! All this stuff stay on the table.
I'm sorry.
But it's a burden Sunny's kids say they're willing to carry.
As soon as it's gone, we'll move her back. As long as the house is still here.
As the Cama and Natchez rivers were nearing record levels, Autanum Creek was dishing out its share of headaches.
Think this is doing any good? No.
And most of the time, sandbags were of no help.
Surprisingly, some West Valley homeowners took the flooding in stride.
What is it? You got a house here? It's a houseboat there.
You have a good sense of humor about it.
That's all you got left.
It humbles you, so you realize material things aren't very important after all.
Hundreds of Yakima Valley homes were damaged in the flooding, the worst since 1933.
A large ice jam near Rosa Dam broke, sending a wall of water and ice chunks down the swollen Yakima River into East Cila.
It all happened too fast for two dozen people in the Elks Club. High water quickly surrounded the clubhouse, stranding its patrons inside for several hours.
Vehicles in the parking lot were inundated, and the ice blocks crushed everything in sight.
And huge chunks of ice, some of them as much as two feet thick, came crashing into this guardrail.
The Elks Golf Course escaped major damage, but an adjacent miniature course was wiped out.
At the Highway 12 junction west of Natchez, an aging bridge leading to White Pass was left broken and unusable.
Bridges in the Nile area toppled under the surge of high water, and Highway 410 was severely damaged, leaving Nile residents stranded and without power.
It was a community effort. Everybody pulled, done what they had to do. The guys got to work with the trucks, and the backhoes got out.
It was just one of those things. You were isolated, and you couldn't do anything about it.
It's an experience, but we lived through it. What the heck?
We moved from Seattle to get a sense of community, and little did I realize what a community we were moving into.
They're absolutely phenomenal. So we are very, very, very blessed.
So our house is still standing. We can fix whatever's wrong. We'll be back in in another few days, maybe a week.
Many homes were heavily damaged in the Nile area, which is located off the Chinook Pass Highway.
Access to the Nile is still a chore because of the many road and bridge washouts.
In the lower Yakima Valley, county roads and bridges were victims of the floods, too.
The interstate system was closed down at the Sela Gap and between Union Gap and Granger, undercut by the raging waters.
The Yakima River would rise to more than six feet above flood stage at the Parker Dam.
The Natchez River would establish record levels, too.
The National Guard and Army came to the rescue of many stranded residents. Helicopters carried them to higher ground.
At about noon, a massed Army chopper arrived on the scene. A crew member lowered himself next to the trailer, and one by one, he lifted the flood victims to the chopper.
One of the victims described the rescue as a frightening experience.
It was scary. It was things were moving. Wind was blowing. The water was coming up. It was pretty scary.
The kids cried. I cried. It was scary.
The crest of the Yakima River soon moved into the lower valley. Lowlands quickly filled, and neighborhoods followed shortly after.
East Toppenish became a lake. Homes and streets were flooded. There weren't enough sandbags to go around. Sometimes they didn't do much good.
Is this your house? Yes, it is. How long do you live here? 15 years. And I never had this bad. It's really bad.
And it would be especially bad for those homeowners lacking flood insurance. A car would plunge off a washed-out rural road.
Two passengers would survive, but the female driver would become the county's only flood-related fatality. Valley residents assessed the record flood.
So we're just working our tails off. How frustrating is it trying to lay down these sandbags? It's starting to get tiring.
Why did you choose this name for your sign? We got that from our in-laws. Since we've had it, we've flooded twice, two out of three years. We might take it down this year.
We're going to change it to end the creek.
This is the worst I've seen it. Ever. A mess. A big mess.
Homeowner Manuel Riojas is working on his soaked house and assessing damages. He's lived here for 30 years, and Saturday's flood was a first.
No, never seen anything like it. As a matter of fact, in my lifetime, this is the first time I've seen a flood.
I think we had about two and a half feet of water inside, and also in the pool and on the front side. I think it was running water about three feet of water in here at one time.
Preliminary damage estimates to public and private property in the county is $30 million, but expected to go much higher.
There was some flood damage to fruit orchards, too. County roads and bridges suffered about $5 million in damage, and Interstate 82 will cost millions to rebuild.
Don Thompson, Yakima County Emergency Management Director, says emergency operations went well, with only one fatality reported.
Thompson says a larger staff and more training are on his wish list, and he had this message for county residents.
I hope this sends a message home that people have got to have a disaster plan. We have the program to do it.
They've got to show us they want it, and we'll be glad to teach it. But they have a 72-hour kit, a disaster plan for their family, and it will probably do a little bit better.
Like the buffalo head nickel, Maguire lumber has been around a long time. For over 50 years, the Maguire name has been associated with lumber and construction building materials.
The flip side of the coin is this. Maguire lumber has design centers with state-of-the-art computer programs to help visualize dream homes and kitchens, windows and doors from the best manufacturers in the business,
Thermatru, Simpson Mastermark, Anderson, and Cascade Kitchen cabinets. A nickel's not worth what it used to be, but it's worth so much more at Maguire Lumber. The wise buyer sees Maguire.
I would recommend chiropractic care to anyone that is athletic-minded or sits at a desk at many hours. Chiropractic has treated many of my problems.
I've had headaches, and I went in for an adjustment, and it has taken care of those. It keeps your spine in alignment. It helps you through the thinking process and the movement.
I would recommend chiropractic care to anyone.
If you're in an accident and it's the other guy's fault, dealing with the other guy's insurance company might not be so easy.
After all, sir, who hit who?
Sir, I know you need a rental car, but before we can authorize that, you need to come in and give us your statement.
But sir, I can't see your file.
No. At Wiley-Hirst and Associates, we help injury victims. Your first visit's free, and there's no obligation. Wiley-Hirst and Associates, why settle for less?
The Columbia Basin is a great place to live, but the past three weeks has been very hard on a lot of people.
First, there was snow, followed by below zero temperatures. That was followed by a warm spell, which was welcomed by many, but that brought flooding.
Flooding like this area has not seen in years. We begin our look back at the flood of 96 on January 31st, when officials in Benton County started to worry about ice jams on the Yakima River.
Joe Martin reports.
The lowland area of the Yakima, why the river slows down there, forms kind of a delta. And so with the slower flowing of the water, you get more ice happening.
The potential is always there, where we've had this much cold weather, this much freezing.
Officials were right to be concerned. The cold snap suddenly broke, and snow and ice that had been building up started to melt.
The Waitsburg-Daten area was the first to feel the effects of high water. Carl Stevens was in Waitsburg and filed this report.
Local residents got an early jump on the rapidly rising Tushie River. Trying to build this levee up down here. We're dumping a rock along this levee here where you can see it almost breaking over.
And then there's a spot over here past the bridge where we're going to try to keep it from running into a lower residential area.
Officials even enlisted the aid of the local high school. The teacher walked in and said they need volunteers downtown to help fill sandbags.
We're trying to help the city get it all cleaned up.
Police closed several roads into town and helped evacuate residents whose homes have been threatened by the river.
This is the worst flooding the town has seen since 1964, but they only have 700 to 800 sandbags, so they must use them wisely.
Some volunteers thought they might be fighting a losing battle, but one longtime resident says it's not the big mess of 32 years ago.
Came right down through the park, but in the park and all of this end of town and filled the basements full and then went right on down 2nd Street.
You can't convince Gary Hofer, though. He says the Copy Eye stream has gotten even worse.
It's just usually a little bitty stream. And it's got a real deep, that's deep water. That sucker's probably 10 feet deep right there, because it's a really deep channel right through here.
It's pretty hard to control Mother Nature when she decides to flood, why, she's going to flood.
That flooding certainly was on the minds of Tri-City officials as the Yakima River the very next day started to rise. Rich Buell was there.
When it comes down the road, we're out of here. That's all I can say.
John and Pat Frank have just about run out of patience with the Yakima River. For the fourth time in 10 years, flood dangers have forced them to leave their home on Peterson Road.
The same thing, get in your truck and get the heck out of here, you know. A little damper this time, I think, than the last time, but what can you do?
What they have done is stack their furniture and belongings on shelves and countertops and have packed clothing and other essential items for what could be a few days stay in a motel until the flood waters go back down in their neighborhood.
And they say they're considering moving out of the area rather than risk having another flood send them packing in the future.
You're not going to, after this one, we're calling it a career out here or what?
It might be. Who knows, but we'll see. I don't know. I love it out here, but who knows?
What folks do know is the Yakima River is expected to continue to rise until Friday night or Saturday morning.
Friday, February 9th saw major flooding throughout the entire region, like these scenes from northern Oregon.
Most of the major east to west roads across Washington state were closed due to high water.
In many communities, volunteers worked with sandbags and heavy equipment in an effort to keep out the high water.
But the major flooding continued to center around the Walla Walla, Dayton, and Waitsburg area.
Parts of Waitsburg and Dayton are underwater tonight as Paddock Creek and the Tushian-Coppieye Rivers continue to flow far above flood stage.
The roads leading into and out of town are closed, and if it wasn't for Jim Arbaugh and his Northwest Rotors helicopter, these pictures wouldn't have been possible.
At last count, we had a total of 14 bridges that we could possibly identify, and there may be a lot more that are damaged beyond use.
And beyond these bridges, on these major county roads, we have folks that are stranded up there,
and so we've got another problem of trying to feed those folks or evacuate them back into civilization.
Highway 12 south, going south from Walla Walla, is completely flooded.
They've got sandbags, four sandbags high, and it's up to the top of that.
Hundreds of volunteers in both communities have been working around the clock sandbagging,
fighting an uphill battle against the racing rivers.
to try and protect as many buildings as they can from suffering much damage.
Unfortunately, the flooding has already taken a huge toll on both communities.
We have numerous homes. We have 50 homes that have received major water damage. 65 have received minor damage.
Our power is off all over town now. Our power just went off about 1030.
Folks who have been evacuated are beginning to fill up shelters in the area, hoping that when they're allowed to go back home,
there will be something left to go home to.
Over the weekend, the flooding shifted to Benton City and West Richland. Julie Lee was there.
These residents have never seen it so bad right before the river crested on Saturday night.
Some had resigned to just watch the waters take its toll. They had already given up.
This is the worst flooding that I have seen since I've lived here for 12 years.
And today, the scene was very different. Homes and streets that were underwater on Saturday are clear and dry.
But this is when reality set in for DJ Sills and his family, salvaging what they can of their belongings.
Probably about right in here. I've got everything up to that level. I've got my beds and all the kids' toys.
The carpeting and parts of the walls had to be stripped out, and the toys and all of their belongings are being dried out on the front lawn.
And our clothes and the important papers, and that's about it. That's all we salvaged.
Anything that was below the three foot marks, just destroyed.
There are many like the Sills who have homeowners insurance, but it doesn't cover flood damage.
They say it will take at least a year to make their house a home again.
I've got anywhere from two to six inches of mud in three houses that I own here on this corner.
Martin quickly moved everything he could to this higher house, but he says it all got covered with mud anyway.
I've got mud that's worked up underneath the floors, and it's just my sheetrock starting to pop off the walls.
All my flooring is coming up. All the carpets, we've been tearing those out.
That doesn't even account for the drenched electrical and heating systems, and the silt in the yard is contaminated from a sewage leak.
So now Martin must try to get the homes back in livable condition without the help of flood insurance.
That's a big task, considering the city must be 80 places at once, removing literally tons of mud from the streets.
One of the engineers told me, he said, if you're going to eat an elephant, you have to start by eating one of these.
If you're going to eat an elephant, you have to start by eating one bite at a time, and that's where we're at.
Mayor Baker says the cleanup could take several months to complete, and the final bill could run around $11 million.
It will be a long time before the total amount of damage done to personal and state property has a dollar amount placed on it,
and it may be even longer before life gets back to normal for all of those affected by the flood of 96.
Like the Buffalo Head Nickel, McGuire Lumber has been around a long time.
For over 50 years, the McGuire name has been associated with lumber and construction building materials.
The flip side of the coin is this.
McGuire Lumber has design centers with state-of-the-art computer programs to help visualize dream homes and kitchens,
windows and doors from the best manufacturers in the business, Thermotru, Simpson Mastermark, Anderson, and Cascade Kitchen cabinets.
A nickel's not worth what it used to be, but it's worth so much more at McGuire Lumber.
The wise buyer sees McGuire.
Music
I would recommend chiropractic care to anyone that is athletic-minded or sits at a desk at many hours.
Chiropractic has treated many of my problems. I've had headaches, and I went in for an adjustment, and it has taken care of those.
It keeps your spine in alignment. It helps you with your thinking process and your movement.
I would recommend chiropractic care to anyone.
If you were in an accident and it's the other guy's fault, dealing with the other guy's insurance company might not be so easy.
After all, sir, who hit who?
Sir, I know you need a rental car, but before we can authorize that, you need to come in and give us your statement.
But sir, I can't see your file.
At Wiley-Hirst and Associates, we help injury victims. Your first visit's free, and there's no obligation.
Wiley-Hirst and Associates, why settle for less?
Music
Flood water showed no mercy in eastern Washington and northern Idaho last week.
Many people in rural Idaho are still isolated and cut off from needed supplies, and the cleanup is just beginning.
Some homes are still threatened by changing stream beds, eroding property.
The word is usually the same from all concerned. There is not much you can do.
Noel Hardin takes a look at the devastation and explains how small communities are coping.
A near-record snowpack in north Idaho, along with a quick change in temperatures, was a combination that was too much for this region's streams.
For many years, drought conditions caused water rationing in many areas, and within a 24-hour period, there was more water than people could handle.
We have sandbags coming out. We have Diatley bringing out some large equipment, and the railroad has offered to give us their cement barriers, which weigh about 3,500 pounds apiece,
and we're going to try to divert any water that comes over the bridge.
We are concerned about this bridge. It is a restricted bridge, and undermining the bridges and everything.
In a small town, we have four bridges, and this is one of our main concerns, too.
I think we lost the battle temporarily. We thought we were going to keep it isolated, but it doesn't look too good right now.
Every north Idaho community was being affected by the overflow of water.
Some cities like Lewiston saw very little flooding in the community, but at one point, there was only one highway out of the Lewiston Valley.
All other major arterials had been cut off by floodwaters or mudslides.
Many small, isolated communities were and still are concerned with food and clean water supplies.
As the water continued to rise, so did the amount of damage.
Many homes in Kootenay County were surrounded like a lake.
It's totally amazing. It really teaches you something.
A person doesn't even begin to imagine how much power water has.
You know, very hard to comprehend. You have to comprehend after this.
Other homes in Nez Perce and Clearwater Counties were dramatically ripped from their foundations.
You build and take care of things and work. You work years for everything you've got there.
That's your life savings in there.
Now, by Mother Nature, it hurts. All I can say, it hurts deep down.
When you lose everything, it takes a little time to build back up.
If we don't have that time, we don't have it. So we have to look at it.
We'll have to go back in the county, go through it all and see what we can salvage.
If we can't salvage anything, that would be all it is to it. We just have to go somewhere else.
Emergency crews from about every agency were mobilized.
There was a job for everyone, from sandbagging to the opening of emergency shelters.
The large impact of a disaster affects so many people.
You don't just have a single family threatened, you have entire communities threatened.
And the reason why this office comes into play when you have communities threatened is that it takes a full team.
It takes fire department, law enforcement, public works, the roads, the whole team of the city and the county working together.
We have national guardsmen all over northern Idaho right now on emergency duty, sandbagging and carrying sandbags
and doing whatever it is they have to do to help these communities survive this period of time.
Other bordering communities were experiencing the same devastation.
The
Houghton and Widman counties in Washington were all in the same boat.
At one time, all Widman county roads were shut down.
Volunteers banded on Pullman Washington's business district to try and save buildings along the Palouse River.
And the normally quiet Palouse River that also runs through Colfax, Washington, was raging.
Crews watched bridges closely in that community.
The river threatened the only remaining open highway in the region.
The road was spared.
As the flood waters recede here in northern Idaho, residents and officials are assessing the damage.
However, some people say this is the worst they'd seen since the early 1960s.
After about the fourth day, the water began to slow in most areas.
Idaho Governor Phil Bandt, along with Senators Larry Craig and Dirk Kepthorne,
toured the flood-stricken areas to assure the residents of the region there was help on the way.
All of northern Idaho from Craigmont North has suffered severe damage,
and it's going to be up in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
And the monetary damage is bad enough, but the impact on people's lives is probably more serious.
People are taking in their neighbors. They're trying to help out.
In the short term, that's marvelous.
Now we've got to get the roads back in shape, the dikes back in shape, so this community can begin to heal.
On the last stop on a tour of the flood-damaged Northwest,
President Clinton told Idaho leaders in Boise that he would cut through federal red tape
to speed aid to the flood victims in the state's panhandle.
I know there is nothing I or anyone else can say to ease the pain of all those people who are dislocated
and who've lost everything, but I can tell you from having gone through it,
if you work together and you keep doing what you're doing, we'll get through this,
and we'll do our best to make you whole at the federal level.
They went through the shop, the barns, the new barn I put up.
I put my cab, my girls' 4-H cabs in there, I found a high spot,
because when I got here, they were waist-deep in the barn.
And they led real easy because they knew they were getting out of water.
So that's my third set of clothes I've had on today, and I'm getting a pair of boots I've had on,
just fighting the mud and water.
We'll go from there, and I'll probably have to reseed all my fields,
because I've got a new layer of topsoil, so I'll go from there.
And erosion, what it did, that's all I can do.
Why are you just sitting around out here in the water?
Nothing else to do, got to wait until it goes down.
We'll come out here and enjoy the sunshine.
But people are really pulling together and working hard and trying to help each other out.
It's great, it's a wonderful community that way.
But through all the destruction, there is a positive side.
The governor providing us with the National Guard provided a much needed relief
to our workers who were working around the clock,
and also bringing in the heavy equipment that we needed to start looking at,
rebuilding those dikes and some of those critical areas.
So the outpouring from the community was phenomenal,
and I'm glad that we were able, from our perspective, to not just help the Indian community,
but a lot of the services that we did provide was to help the non-Indian community, our neighbors.
When this is all over, we'll continue to be neighbors,
and I think one of the positive outcomes is we'll be stronger neighbors.
The bond that we created through an event like this is something that I think will have some positive long-lasting effects.
A final note, total flood damage in the state now exceeds a quarter billion dollars.
In the weeks ahead, KIMA News will cover efforts to prevent a recurrence of the 96 floods, the worst on record.
I'm T.J. Close. Good night.
This has been The Flood of 96, a report on the Northwest flooding.
The Flood of 96 was probably sponsored by
McGuire Lumber,
Warninger Chiropractic,
and Wiley-Hurst & Associates.