Rain-Gorged Rivers Flood Pacific Northwest

The mighty Columbia and Willamette rivers raged through Oregon and southern Washington on Thursday, threatening downtown Portland, sweeping into low-lying areas and forcing thousands of people to flee in the region’s worst flooding in three decades.

Dozens of landslides sent homes, apartments and cars plowing down hillsides and closed off at least three sections of Interstate 5 and Interstate 84. A surge of mud over the railroad tracks sent a Burlington Northern-Santa Fe freight train plunging into Puget Sound south of Seattle, injuring two crew members.

At least three deaths were attributed to the flooding in Oregon, where disaster declarations were issued in 18 counties. And after a helicopter inspection of the Willamette Valley, Gov. John Kitzhaber asked President Clinton for federal disaster aid.

In Washington state, 13 counties and the Yakima tribal reservation were declared disaster areas. Heavy flooding also was reported in parts of Idaho, where seven counties were declared disaster areas.

And the worst could be yet to come. The Willamette River won’t crest until 11 a.m. today in downtown Portland. It was scheduled to reach the top of the riverfront sea wall around 2 a.m. today and threatened businesses up to three blocks from the river.

“Tonight,” Mayor Vera Katz said, “everybody’s going to be watching the walls of the Willamette. And that will be very slow.”

The Northwest braced for a fifth day of heavy rain, a downpour that arrived alongside a sudden late-winter thaw that has poured torrents of snowmelt into nearly every river and creek in three states. The National Weather Service was predicting continued rain through Thursday night and up to 3 more inches today before the sun is expected to appear again on Saturday.

The huge Columbia, swollen into a rolling highway of mud, debris and churning flood waters, broke through to inundate several homes near Vancouver, Wash., and was continuing to rise, forecast to reach 12 1/2 feet above flood stage by late this morning.

“If those forecasts are correct, we may experience some of the worst flooding this state has ever seen,” Kitzhaber said, declaring a statewide emergency. “I am confident that Oregonians are prepared to handle this flood emergency. . . . I know that together, we will get through this.”

Several hours after his helicopter inspection of the Willamette Valley, Kitzhaber was admitted to the intensive care unit of a Salem hospital with chest pains. There was no immediate report on the condition of the governor, who is a physician.

“We don’t really know how high the rivers are going to get,” said Tom Worden, spokesman for the Oregon Emergency Management Division. “If they get real high, we’re going to start losing bridges, start losing roadways and that’s a major concern.”

Emergency workers toiled from the predawn hours Thursday and throughout the afternoon, nailing up plywood barriers backed by sandbags along the banks of the Willamette in downtown Portland to protect hundreds of shops, offices, hotels and banks that would be inundated if the river breached the barriers.

“By 7 o’clock [Thursday evening] we’ll have 5 more feet of water, which is about a foot above where we’re standing right now,” said Jeff Lucars, a foreman overseeing the hasty construction. “We’re just going to try to keep the mass of it out of downtown. We won’t stop it all, I’m sure.”

Major hotels and shopping malls along the river, just north of downtown, were evacuated Thursday afternoon, and dozens of homeowners worked to rescue their belongings from advancing flood waters in low-lying areas around the river.

The battle was over almost before it began in the northern Oregon coastal town of Tillamook, famous for its cheese, where a series of dike breaches on rivers flowing out of the Coastal Range left the entire town submerged under 3 to 8 feet of water.

Dairy cows stranded in the fields were seen straining to extend their noses above the rising waters, and some observers said it was likely that thousands of cattle would be lost. Scores of cars abandoned downtown were submerged.

With rivers overtopping sewage and filtration facilities throughout the state, rats by the hundreds started crawling out of Portland’s sewers, and officials were forced to shut off the city’s main water supply in the Bull Run watershed.

Katz said that the city had only three to four days’ supply in reserve, and urged residents to adopt conservation measures. The eastern suburb of Sandy was without water, and smaller communities throughout the state with breached water supplies were being advised to boil their water.

The mayor said that the city elected not to issue an evacuation order in downtown Portland, which has few homes along the riverfront and where business owners worked furiously to load their goods into trucks and pack the rest of them on counter tops and desks. Law offices made backup copies of computer files and hauled file boxes into upper-level offices. Banks unplugged electrical equipment and loaded it on desktops.

“I’m just shaking. I’ve been working since 7 a.m. I haven’t had anything to eat. I’ve only had coffee,” said Betty Pakenen, owner of a riverfront bookshop whose stock she had loaded into a truck by midafternoon.

“They’re telling us the water’s going to hit 39 feet. Our spot is 30 feet and we’ll be totally flooded,” said another woman helping unload a riverfront jewelry shop. “We’ve been up all night. It’s just pretty hard.”

In southeast Portland, residents were battling the advances of swollen Johnson Creek, which poured through several residential streets and threatened dozens of additional homes. It was due to reach its flood peak sometime early today.

Volunteers from local high schools joined the National Guard in packing and loading sandbags, as they did throughout the two states, and homeowners anxiously piled them against basement windows and front porches.

“We’re scared. These kids are not used to this. There’s normally flooding around here, but nothing like this,” said Cindy Livingston, whose home was surrounded by a foot of filthy brown water. She surveyed the sandbags arrayed against the front of the house. “They told us this isn’t going to hold,” she said. “They said when it starts to rise, we got to call the Fire Department.”

A few blocks away, two brothers were loading sandbags around the home of their 85-year-old mother.

“My mother’s been through three of these things,” said Wardell Gibson. “She wasn’t worried. But this morning, she walked down to the creek, came back, got on the phone, and said, ‘Get the sand.’ ”

In Keizer, north of Salem, officials ordered an evacuation of more than 4,000 riverside homes imperiled by the rising Willamette. A dike built along the stretch after the heavy flooding of 1964 was proving ineffective because “the people building along there in recent years have poked holes in it so they could see the river,” said Marion County spokesman Ron Smith.

At least three deaths were blamed on the floods. A 9-year-old girl fell into a culvert and drowned when she went out to check the mail east of Scio; an elderly woman died when her car got bumped off Highway 99 and plowed into a flooded field and a 45-year-old man drowned after driving into high water near Brownsville, Ore.

A 62-year-old woman was missing after her house near Troutdale was slammed by a mudslide into the Sandy River and floated 3 miles downstream. Her 70-year-old husband was rescued by a tugboat.

In Washington state, most major rivers and innumerable smaller streams were overflowing their banks. Many low-lying areas, urban and rural alike, were under water across a wide area.

Interstate 5 near Chehalis was closed in both directions because of deep water with no detours available. U.S. highways 2 and 12 over the Cascades were closed. Interstate 90, the main east-west artery, was closed for the second time this week.

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Rising Waters

Portland residents were keeping a wary eye on river levels, which threatened the downtown area.

Friday a.m.? Crest feet

Thursday: 28.8 feet

Seawall

Monday: 6.8 feet

Base level*

* reference point set by engineers

****

Rainfall totals (in inches)

*--*

City Mon. Tues. Wed. Normal** Portland 1.08 2.16 1.90 1.04 Salem 2.17 2.12 2.32 1.19 Eugene .98 2.89 3.69 1.21

*--*

** Feb. 1-7

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Oregon’s Worst Flood Since ’64

Days of heavy rain and melting snow sent rivers and streams raging over their banks across northern Oregon again Thursday.

1. Willamette River was expected to crest today 1.2 feet above Portland’s seawall.

2. Interstate 5 and 84 were closed.

3. Plywood and plastic were used to extend Portland’s mile-long seawall.

4. Two huge slides buried Interstate 84 near Cascade Locks.

5. Salem: State workers in the capital were told to stay home.

6. Keizer: Officials ordered up to 12,000 people to evacuate.

7. Corvallis and Albany: Faced Willamette flooding for the first time since 1964.