Levee of Pain : The Flood of Emotions, Heartbreak of Cleanup

Jan Thompson nervously cupped a mug of tea in her hands as she paced from her front porch to the kitchen to check a batch of chocolate chip cookies.

With waters rising furiously on the nearby Feather River, she’d been on edge for several days. But something about the stillness in her rural neighborhood made her uneasy the night of Jan. 2.

It was so quiet that she could hear the voices of prisoners who’d been brought in to sandbag the nearby levee, a mound of grassy earth that stood between the frothing river and the long, flat stretch of houses and farmland in this small town 100 miles northeast of San Francisco.

On a hunch, Jan called Denise Haddix, a neighbor she hardly knew whose house stood 15 feet from the levee.

Denise’s scream pierced the night.

“Get out now! It’s breaking behind us!” she shouted.

Jan threw down the phone and ran for her car as the levee crumbled.

“It was a sound like lightning hitting the earth,” Jan said. Her home was literally ripped apart by a 30-foot wave of water.

Three of the eight people who perished in January’s massive California floods died in Yuba County that night: an elderly man who drowned in his home, and two women who failed to out-drive the fast-running flood waters. After the water receded several days later, the women’s bodies were found near their cars.

Jan’s husband, Jim, was at work, and there was no time to let the couple’s 80 head of cattle or four horses out of their pens. Nor was there time to find the dogs, including Rodeo, the family’s beloved Australian shepherd, or Zek, their grandson’s German shepherd.

“Be calm,” Jan told herself. “Think clearly.” The one goal she had was to drive safely into Marysville, where her husband anxiously awaited her at the E-Z Stop convenience store they own.

“It was probably just a few minutes, but it seemed like forever,” said Jim, 57. “But she made it out alive. That’s the main thing.”

Another bright spot came when a TV crew in a helicopter plucked Rodeo from the rooftop of the couple’s home.

But, otherwise, it’s been a long 1997 so far for the Thompsons, who have been living with their son, Brett, in nearby Marysville for the last month.

Trips by boat to the still-swamped house have revealed a gaping hole where water forced its way through their bedroom window, leaving a trail of insulation, drywall, mud and tree branches in its wake.

“Even our barn floated away,” said Jim, who is searching emergency shelters for the couple’s other animals.

Jan, a 55-year-old accountant, said the family will not be able to apply for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency until the water goes down, allowing FEMA investigators to fully examine the damage.

Jim and Brett have been able to rescue family photos and a grandson’s jacket from military school. They also used a shovel to dig up several shotguns and rifles, a few antique pocket watches and coins, and nearly $1,000 in cash intended as a bank deposit.

But looters--Jan says they are “as bad as people who rob graves”--remain a constant threat. So far, thieves have stolen the contents of the couple’s recreational trailer and a few saddles. Looters also tried to steal a boat, though Jim ran them off on Super Bowl Sunday.

“We’ve never thought about retirement, going to Palm Springs and all that,” a disheartened Jim said. “We had what we wanted, but not anymore.”

That was pretty much the sentiment throughout the neighborhood, especially for the Haddix family, whose house was torn down by the state to make way for the levee repair.

“A little blood, a lot of sweat and some tears went into this house,” Rick Haddix said, turning his head to hide some tears as he and other family members pulled out whatever soggy belongings they could. “I thought I’d die in this house.”

Down the road a bit, a hole in an upstairs window marked a moment of frustration for another neighbor, Mike Messick. After he crawled from a boat to his roof to find that most of his belongings were awash, the usually soft-spoken Messick hurled a waterlogged antique book through the window and into the muddy water that still swamped his family’s walnut orchard.

Messick and his wife, Kathy, were about to close the sale of the house when the flood hit.