Pilots fly into the face of storm danger

On a nerve-racking flight from the Navy's Whidbey Island air station to Chehalis, helicopter pilot Lt. James Udall considered turning back more than once because of the wicked weather and lousy visibility.

But during the height of Monday's storm, Udall and his crew pressed on.

"Every aircraft that was down there took a risk just to get there," he said of the helicopters sent in by the Navy, Coast Guard and the King County Sheriff's Office. "No reasonable person would fly there unless people were really in distress."

When Udall's MH-60 Knighthawk touched down at the tiny airport in Chehalis about noon Monday, a Lewis County sheriff's deputy climbed aboard — and provided critical knowledge about the area that helped speed the crew's rescue mission.

From the air, flood-stricken Lewis County "looked like a small-scale Katrina," said Udall, who flew rescue missions after the famous hurricane slammed the Gulf Coast in 2005.

Udall, his co-pilot, two airmen, a medical corpsman and the deputy rescued more than 20 people, six dogs and two or three cats. Most residents were able to make it onto their rooftops, usually with only a backpack or suitcase of belongings, he said.

But in one rescue, a crew member had to swing through an open window to rescue a man who had just one leg. The crewman hooked the man to his harness and had to jump from the windowsill without slamming back into the house.

"There were a lot of nail-biting moments," Udall said Tuesday. Fast-moving, debris-strewn water the color of chocolate made for "a unique challenge because you have to be concerned about people getting swept away or swept under."

And things got dicier as day became night: "When the power goes out, the red lights on top of antennas disappear and you can't see telephone poles anymore," he said. "We had to keep looking out of the aircraft to make sure we didn't run into any hazards."

Lt. Eric Perdue, a Coast Guard pilot from Port Angeles, shared the skies with Udall on Monday. Perdue, another pilot and two crew members helped pull three people out of a flooded rural home near Chehalis, including a 95-year-old woman and her son, he said.

Perdue, like Udall, compared Monday's rescues to Hurricane Katrina."I was a responder for Katrina and the flooding that I saw down there [near Chehalis] was similar to what I saw in New Orleans," he said.

Floodwaters quickly and unexpectedly shifted late Monday, submerging the Chehalis airport and sweeping away two patrol cars that had been parked there, said Lewis County Sheriff's Sgt. Stacy Brown.

Helicopter crews are now using a Toledo airfield and also making landings on the football field at W.F. West High School in Chehalis, she said.

As of noon Tuesday, helicopter crews had rescued 140 people, including two sheriff's deputies, Brown said. Some 160 people were rescued by boat.

The rescued deputies had themselves just evacuated more than 20 residents using two dump trucks, the only county vehicles tall enough to get through deep water, Brown said. But when the flood path suddenly changed, their escape route was cut off. They spent Monday night in the uncovered dump trucks on Highway 6 before they were hoisted to safety by a helicopter crew around 4 a.m. Tuesday, Brown said.

The helicopters have made a huge difference in the rescue operation, Brown said. A five-member crew from the King County Sheriff's Office rescued 46 people Monday, including a Vietnam vet in a wheelchair, all on one tank of gas, Sgt. Sydney Jackson said.

The team returned Tuesday to deliver water, milk, diapers and medicine. Jackson, who was aboard the sheriff's helicopter, Guardian One, said the scene was surreal: "There were cars and motor homes and large propane tanks floating down the river, and livestock clinging to the last piece of high ground."

Sara Jean Green: 206-515-5654 or sgreen@seattletimes.com