TILLAMOOK, Ore. -- Looking at what’s left of the washed out culvert at Fawcett Creek, Glen Cyphers knows he is lucky to be alive.

Cyphers, his daughter and two grandchildren were driving home from church Wednesday night in Tillamook. The rain was coming down, many roads were flooded and it was pitch dark.

“All of sudden my daughter says ‘the bridge is out’ and boom we're in,” recalls Cyphers.

Their car plunged into fast-moving Fawcett Creek and was swept downstream.

“We kept going downstream quite a ways,” says Cyphers, “and then a log came through the back window and the car started filling up with water.”

With the car tangled in a log jam, Cyphers -- a retired state trooper -- forced his door open, grabbed his granddaughter and put her on the trunk of the car. Suddenly, the car listed sideways.

“I thought my daughter and other granddaughter were gone,” remembers Cyphers. “I couldn't see them anymore.”

Meanwhile, his daughter and other granddaughter fought to escape the submerged car.

“We got up top of the car and we had a nice prayer time,” says Cyphers. “We knew we were dead.”

The four were stranded for nearly an hour on a stack of logs before being miraculously rescued unharmed by Tillamook volunteer firefighters and the Coast Guard.

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They weren’t the only victims of the flood-swollen creek. Another car with a mother, her daughter and 2 infants also plunged into the creek.

The 11-year-old girl managed to crawl through the broken front window and shimmy across a branch of the tree to get to safety. The daughter went to a nearby house to alert authorities that her mother and two young children were atop the vehicle.

"By this time, the river was pounding on the roof and going over the roof," according to Tillamook Fire Captain Charles Spittles.

After rescuers threw an extension ladder over a limb and dangled ropes to her, he said, McRae lashed the two children, and rescuers pulled them up to safety. He estimated the children were 3 or younger.

McRae herself "was getting cold, weak," he said, so rescuers tipped the ladder down to her so that she could pull herself over the end and crawl along it to get to her rescuers.

Tillamook County Sheriff Todd Anderson said McRae and the two children were treated at a hospital and released.

Rainfall reports from the storm ranged from 5 to 7 inches generally, with one report of more than 10 inches south of Tillamook.

In all, nobody was seriously hurt.

Highway 6 was closed because of a mudslide Thursday between Highway 47 and Jordan Creek Road.

Crews closed Highway 101 between its junction with U.S. 26 and Seaside, because of standing water.  A pilot car to was guiding high-clearance vehicles through, but all other traffic was rerouted to Oregon 202 to Oregon 103 and back to Hwy. 26. 

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