01/31/2003

By ABE ESTIMADA, ANTONIA GIEDWOYN and DOUG IRVING, kgw.com Staff

What had been a relatively dry winter came to a deluge of an end when a series of powerful Pacific storms awakened streams and roused hillsides from their slumber.

In the storms' wake on Friday, neighborhoods turned into small lakes, residents were either stranded inside or evacuated from their homes and dozens of roads shut down in northwest Oregon and southwest Washington.

Highways became parking lots, and local roads such as Foster Road in Portland became small canals gushing with coffee-colored water – just in time for the evening commute.

A car is halfway underwater at SW Tropicana Avenue in the Cedar Hills area. (kgw.com Photo)

Clark County officials in southwest Washington recommended that residents living near the Lewis River evacuate their homes. Amtrak shut down service between Portland and Seattle because of numerous mudslides along the route.

Rising water closed Highway 101 at Tillamook. And caught between Johnson Creek and Cedar Mill Creek, a Washington County neighborhood of about a dozen homes became a small pond.

The storms produced record-breaking rainfall in the Portland area as Thursday night passed into Friday. KGW’s weather station recorded 2.13 inches of rain in downtown Portland, shattering the previous record of an inch and a half.

The rainfall record at Portland International Airport is 2.33 inches.

“We will certainly threaten that, at least,” said KGW chief meteorologist Matt Zaffino.

Neighbors fill sandbags at SW Tropicana Avenue. The sandbags were later placed in the driveways of houses threatened by the rising waters of Johnson Creek and Cedar Mill Creek. (kgw.com Photo)

Much of the moisture-laden system has passed to the east, Zaffino said. Behind it, a cooler weather system will move into the region, easing the spigot that Mother Nature doused the region for 48 hours.

“The rain will end as we go later into the evening,” Zaffino said. “But we’ll have to watch this because some parts south of Portland are going to stay rainy for quite a while. While the Portland area begins to clear out, we still have to keep an eye on rivers elsewhere in the state.”

Southwest Washington

A massive tree fell onto this home in Camas. (KGW photo)

“Heavy rain certainly would have to be looked at as the primary problem,” said Capt. Paul Pearce of the Camas Police Department.

Neighbors packed their belongings and left their homes on Northwest Sandpiper Drive about 2 miles east of Woodland. Widespread flooding on the north fork of the nearby Lewis River below Merwin Dam caused some water to spill onto local roads.

Portland

Traffic moves through deep water on Hwy. 30. (kgw.com photo/Doug Irving)

Foster Road at SE 102th Avenue closed after Johnson Creek overran its banks. Reports of small landslides in the West Hills flooded the city of Portland.

"It doesn't take very much water to loosen the soil and uproot trees, causing slides," said Mary Volm, City of Portland spokeswoman for road conditions.

Water cascades from a drainage pipe and onto Highway 30. (kgw.com photo/Doug Irving)

Southwest Washington

Across the metro area, some residents from southwest Portland to Washington County awoke to flooded yards.

Water from a clogged drainage ditch and 100-year flood plain turned Lisale Jelderks home on 7970 SW Oleson Road in southwest Portland into an island. About two inches of water poured into her garage and a spare room.

“This was something beyond towels,” said Jelderks, a single mother of one daughter. “This isn’t like your washing machine overflowed. This is like we can’t stop the water from coming in.”

A drainage ditch in front of this Oleson Road home backed up, flooding the front yard of the house. (kgw.com Photo)

Jelderks, 34, blames Washington County for not properly maintaining the drainage ditch in front of her house.

“I wonder where my tax dollars are going,” she said.

Cedar Mill Creek and Johnson Creek

Across the city in unincorporated Washington County, Beverly Holmes looked out her front yard at 1020 SW Tropicana Avenue and also saw a lake.

The lake was from Johnson Creek and Cedar Mill Creek jumping their banks. The gushing waters also flooded basements and crawlspaces of about a dozen homes of her neighbors.

Johnson Creek in the Cedar Hills area threatens residents' backyards. (kgw.com Photo)

“I tried going out earlier (Friday) morning, and literally, (I) fell, so I didn’t want to try again,” she said.

Holmes called her brother in Vancouver, a nephew in Battle Ground and other relatives. It took her brother’s truck, jacked up high above the waters, to pluck Holmes from the front steps of her house.

Down the street, neighbors used a rowboat to move sandbags from one house to another. Two cars were halfway submerged in waist deep water. Other neighbors used their cars as makeshift dams against the water, parking their vehicles across their driveways.

Just as the water lapped up against the sandbags placed across the homes’ driveways, the rain began to let up Friday afternoon. But their work wasn’t over. In another neighborhood a few blocks to the east, a swollen Johnson Creek was pouring into the backyards of homes.

So the weary neighbors of Tropicana Avenue got inside their cars, grabbed their shovels, and lent a hand to those who had come to their aid earlier in the day.

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