Tales from around rain-soaked region

Hundreds were evacuated Monday as floodwaters swelled, threatening — and in some cases overrunning — homes and businesses. From Hamilton to North Bend, some people lost cars and, at least temporarily, their homes. Others were only inconvenienced. And many were preparing for the worst yet to come. Here are some of their stories.

North Bend: "This is the ocean"

Near North Bend, about 30 houses were flooded in the Shamrock Park and Berry Estates neighborhoods.

It's just to the east of the outlet malls where Larry Stephenson and his neighbors live, in an unincorporated part of King County that's surrounded by the town.

As he hosed mud off the walls of his garage today, Stephenson said: "Here comes my canoe. I lent it to some people down the street."

His neighbors were using the canoe to get to their house.

At 3 p.m. Monday, the street was nearly dry, with only rain collecting there. Then a levee was topped along the South Fork of the Snoqualmie River, and the water started arriving, rising 2-1/2 feet in 1-1/2 hours Monday night.

"It was a nightmare here last night at 5 o'clock," he said. "I ran door-to-door, telling the neighbors we had to evacuate."

Gordy Gaub, owner of the Ace hardware store along Main Avenue South, and his manager, Carl Roy, looked out at their flooded parking lot, with a Ford sedan and Honda sitting along the curb, stranded by water up to the tops of the wheel wells.

Kids paddled kayaks in the street. Occasionally a high-rise pickup truck would splash through, sending waves across the lot.

"This is the ocean," said Roy, watching tiny whitecaps lap at the base of the electric doors into the store. "The kids are having a good time."

The store never closed, however, and Roy noted that he'd probably gotten 100 calls this morning from customers wanting to know if they were open; even city of North Bend crews stopped in for fresh supplies of foul-weather gear and tarps.

Stephanie Huber, who's lived along Southeast 123rd Street, just east of the outlet malls and a Safeway store since 1989, says the floods have come five times before.

"This will be the sixth time," she said, estimating her damage at $30,000 to $40,000, with 28 inches of water in the ground level of her two-story house.

By Tuesday, the water was receding, and Stephenson and Kelley were able to start hosing out their garages, although dozens of other homes remained submerged.

"Oh, it's going down — we're in good shape," said Gaub. But Gaub, who's owned the store since 1979 and built the shopping center where it's located, noted that the parking lot had never flooded with water from the river before.

Hamilton: You do what you can, but is it enough?

In this low-lying Skagit County town, where floodwaters tend to hit hard, many residents have learned to prepare as soon as a flood threat is announced.

James and Machelle Maylone, who lost most of their belongings three years ago when the Skagit River rose to 42.2 feet and spilled over its banks, managed to get most of their belongings off the ground Monday.

By midafternoon, when firefighters knocked on their door, they'd even wrestled some of their appliances onto blocks and milk crates. They moved their truck, piled four loads of clean laundry into their car, grabbed the kids and a few other treasures, and headed for the Red Cross shelter at a nearby church.

As they watched the water rise, though, they worried that they hadn't done enough.

If the floodwaters reached 46 feet, as some forecasters were predicting, they'd lose everything all over again.

"You feel pretty helpless. There's not much we can do but stay here, wait, hope for a lull and see what happens," James Maylone said. "Sometimes I wish we lived in an RV. You'd just unhook the water and the power and move out."

Another Hamilton resident, Thomas Mauck, also spent the morning preparing for the flood. The last few moments at his home on Elm Street were spent getting his little band of chickens to safety.

"I was throwing chickens in the attic when the firemen came," he said.

More than two dozen Hamilton residents slept at the Hamilton First Baptist Church Monday night, said Pastor Ron Edwards. "You kind of get used to it," he said. "It draws people together; there is almost a bittersweet experience. They enjoy seeing each other and being together. There is an outpouring of help."

Sultan: taking it in soggy stride

Residents say that every couple of years, when there's enough rainfall or snowmelt, the Skykomish River will fill its wide channel, and the Sultan River, which meets the Skykomish near the entrance to town, will spill over.

"Everybody just kind of shrugs it off," said Paul Middleton, a Sultan resident for 20 years. "The only people that get too upset are the new people."

Jeff Criswell, whose family owns Main Street Laundry and Dry Cleaning, said he isn't too worried about this flood, even though it sent water flowing into his business and seems to be the worst in quite a few years.

"It's part of having a business in a flood plain," he said, adding the family business floods every couple of years.

On the 311th Avenue Southeast bridge over the Skykomish River, which was closed because of the flood, a couple of dozen residents peered over the side at the raging brown waters below.

They watched gigantic logs and even whole trees drift under the bridge. Every so often, a chair or wooden planks would also drift by.

Fall City: RVs flee from river's reach

About 30 miles east of Seattle, campers moved their vehicles to avoid being trapped at the confluence of the Raging River and the Snoqualmie River.

About two dozen recreational vehicles and trailers were pulled alongside a road there, bearing license plates from Washington, Utah, South Dakota and California. They all were tenants at the Snoqualmie River Campground, which adjoins the Twin Rivers Golf Course. When the Raging River overflowed, the owners disconnected their electrical, water and sewage connections and fled to an entrance road, where the vehicles were lined up along the shoulder.

"We moved it up on the roadway [on Sunday], 25 or 30 of us," said Carrie Anderson. She and her husband, Joel Olivas, and their children are from Eastern Washington and had been living in the campground more than a year.

"The generator's all hooked up," she said. "The kids are inside watching cartoons."

But a diamond-shaped sign near the displaced RVs warned of water over the road, and the owners anxiously watched the Raging River continue to rise.

Carnation: isolated, all of a sudden

Neighborhoods along the Tolt River were cut off by flooded roads, with some residents fleeing before the water got too high.

On Northeast 32nd Street, residents along the south side of the river pitched in to shore up the riverbank and their homes with sandbags. Water rushed by only a foot or two below the lip of the river, carrying logs and branches at sometimes alarming speeds.

"I tell my friends who ask why I live here — 798 out of 800 days, it's gorgeous," said Rob Westover, soaking wet as he heaved sandbags off the bed of his truck.

On the other side of the river, Tolt River Road was flooded, creating a small, thigh-high lake at 353rd Avenue Northeast and blocking off a neighborhood where about 30 families live.

Sandra Johnson drove through the water in her sport- utility truck with big tires, leaving her home behind. It's the first time the river had forced her out since 1990, when floodwaters were just inches from her home.

Chris Allen stood in front of the flooded intersection considering what to do. The deep water hadn't been there when he left for work. Now he just wanted to go back to get a change of clothes and his dog, Homer, before heading to town to stay with a friend.

Allen and a friend waded into the water up to their thighs, bringing a rope they intended to tie around a tree for safety if the water got too deep. After pushing their way through the muddy water for about 100 yards, they decided it wasn't worth it.

"We could get across, but the dog can't get through that anyhow," Allen said. A neighbor in a nearby house will take care of his dog.

"It's not a big deal," Allen said of the flooding. "It's just something you go through."

Seattle Times staff reporters Brian Alexander, Christine Clarridge, Peyton Whitely, Marsha King and Joe Mullin contributed to this report.