Feeling the forces of nature

Reeling from a deluge of torrential rain and melting snow, much of the Pacific Northwest became a virtual island Thursday as massive flooding and avalanche conditions cut off most major transportation arteries.

Workers struggled to open a possible 400-mile detour around a waterlogged 20-mile section of Interstate 5 near Chehalis in southwestern Washington. Seattle was cut off by road and rail from Portland to the south, and snow blocked most mountain passes to the east.

More than 30,000 residents who had been evacuated tried Thursday to outsmart the forces of nature and creep home. Despite the mayhem, there were few injuries and only isolated flooding of homes.

The region’s major airports were operating normally, but officials said it could be days before I-5 reopens because the last of more than 30 rivers running above flood stage across western Washington and Oregon were expected to crest today. Rivers in the eastern part of the state continued to rise.

“We have totally stopped commerce in this state,” said Paula Hammond, state Transportation secretary. The I-5 shutdown, she said, was costing Washington $4 million a day.

In Orting -- a town in the shadow of Mt. Rainier and surrounded by the turbulent Puyallup and Carbon rivers -- thousands of residents who fled their homes Wednesday slowly began returning, in some cases to deluged driveways and flooded garages.

“The water came up to within an inch of the back door. The garage is full of water. It’s never flooded like this, ever,” said Don Steed, whose backyard on Voights Creek was a muddy torrent swirling around his riding mower, barbecue and Volkswagen Beetle.

“The neighbor came over in the middle of the night to tell us they were evacuating, but we stayed here and just battled through it,” Steed said. “My wife didn’t want to lose no antiques, and I’d just finished painting the bathroom wall, so I had to protect it.”

National Guard troops helped officials in Orting assess the damage, and state transportation workers struggled to create the I-5 detour. That flooded section of roadway normally is traveled by 10,000 trucks a day.

At least 19 counties -- mainly in southwestern Washington -- had declared states of emergency, while voluntary evacuations in the Tacoma suburb of Fife brought the threat of flooding to the edges of the state’s more densely populated areas.

The malevolent weather converged on the region when warm, wet air from the Pacific swept over a large snowpack, sending torrents of water racing out of the mountains.

“The weather has already turned more showery, and the . . . significant precipitation is over. But it will take a while for the rivers to drain all the water,” said Chris Burke, meteorologist for the National Weather Service. “It may be Saturday before all the flood warnings have ended.”

Trucker Ken Walker, cooling his heels near Chehalis, said he had set off from Spokane on the eastern side of the state toward Seattle when he learned the mountain pass on Interstate 90 was closed. He diverted south to the Oregon border and was making his way back up I-5 when, once again, he came to a miserable halt.

“I got to here and they closed the road in front of me,” he told Northwest Cable News. “There is no other way in, unless you’ve got a boat.”

“We expect in some areas conditions to get worse today before they get better,” Lt. Gov. Brad Owen told reporters Thursday.

In the Cascades foothills, the Snoqualmie River crested at a record 8 feet above flood stage, and rescuers helped residents in the towns of Snoqualmie and Duvall evacuate.

Flooding is a regular occurrence in the rain-soaked Pacific Northwest, and many of the communities under voluntary evacuation this week have been there before: Many Orting residents were forced out of their homes as recently as November and also in 2006.

Yet Mayor Cheryl Temple said never before was she required to send firetrucks up and down the streets of Orting with loudspeakers, urging the town’s 26,000 residents to move to higher ground, as she did on Wednesday afternoon.

“The rise of water in the rivers was more significant than I have ever seen, and I have been here 22 years,” Temple said at her City Hall office, which was beginning to operate normally again Thursday.

“We could not ignore those numbers,” she said. “It was pretty scary.”

Flood damage in Orting largely was limited to a school and a ball field, thanks to significant levee and storm pond construction over the last few years. Several homes on the outskirts of town were flooded, however, and many residents remained stranded on the wrong side of inundated roads.

By and large, the locals took it all in stride. Orting lives under the constant, if remote, possibility that a volcanic eruption of Mt. Rainier could send down a deadly wall of mud, trees and rocks.

Drill sirens go off periodically, and “volcano evacuation routes” are posted prominently around town.

“They say it’s the most dangerous city in the U.S. because of the mountain and two major rivers running through here,” said Shannon Shaw, who stood on one end of a flooded road with her husband and two daughters, unable to return home to see if their house had survived a marauding tributary of the Puyallup.

“But the summers are so beautiful. It’s so nice to walk along the river. You can ride horses up on the levee road.”

Shaw and her husband, Matthew, got a call from emergency authorities shortly after dawn Wednesday advising them to evacuate. Within three hours, the road out was flooded, and the family had to evacuate by boat, leaving four cats, a dog and the chickens behind.

“The chickens are in the bathroom. I don’t want to see that when I go back,” Shaw said.

A few miles away, Barbara and Douglas Peterson had a rushing creek backed up to the edge of their deck, and a pond where much of their yard had been. After three evacuations in three years, they said, they were ready to move.

“There’s no sense staying here,” Douglas Peterson said. “I’ve got nothing but mud . . . out there I’ll have to clean up again. Water in the garage. The county has talked about buying all these places and clearing it out, and I think it’s probably time to move.”

--

kim.murphy@latimes.com

--

Researcher Stuart Glascock contributed to this report.

--

latimes.com

/nation

View the flooding in western Washington from all angles in an online photo gallery.