In Lewis County, floodwaters leave; breathtaking destruction emerges

Take Interstate 5 south to Chehalis and get off at the Highway 6 exit. Drive west for about five or 10 miles and you'll start to see it:

Pastures are still underwater; trucks and cars are buried in mud up to their door handles, marooned in ditches on the sides of the road; houses and barns, caked with mud 6 to 8 feet up their sides, seem to be sinking in lumpy, black quicksand.

Parts of the asphalt shoulder are racked and peeled back like a giant, blackened banana peel. A reminder of the force of rushing water.

Now, take a right on Ceres Road. It's closed to through traffic, covered in mud and deep puddles, but if you follow it you'll see a double-wide trailer that shows a high-water mark above its windows. The water would have been 10 or 12 feet deep here. The trailer is empty now, pushed off its foundation, and its roof is limp. Its contents have been dragged out on the street: a stove, a muddied oven, a refrigerator without a door and lying on its side.

The metal mailbox pole out front is twisted and warped, bent over like an old man. Shrubs and branches cling to the backs of street signs. Broken trees and logs are heaped in the ditches.

Farmers wearing red-plaid jackets, yellow waterproof pants and orange duck-hunting caps wade into their fields. In the distance, they're small; each step is laborious. Lifting, stepping, digging for where farm equipment used to be.

When they come back in, their faces are covered in streaks of mud, lending them the look of warriors. They stand in front of their homes or in their empty barns, their rubber-gloved hands on their hips. Some shake their heads and look up at the sky as if to ask, Why? What now?

The cows that remain — an estimated 700 drowned, according to the Lewis County Farm Bureau — gather in the center of their fields. They're muddy, too. The hair on their faces is matted like dreadlocks, and they look at you with an unamused expression, batting their great big eyes in the newly fallen snow.

Bridge is just gone

If you head back to Highway 6 and down to where the entrance to Rainbow Falls State Park used to be — almost at the city of Pe Ell now — there's a crowd gathered. Families pull over to gape: The suspension bridge (the "hanging bridge," it was called) that used to be there isn't anymore. Just got taken away, whispers one lady to her husband. "Gone. Not even a trace."

The river was loud that night, another woman says. It's been loud before, but nothing like it was last Monday night. It was like the second coming, she says.

Zoanne Thomas, 41, whose folks are from Pe Ell, used to come to Rainbow Park for family reunions. They'd play baseball and barbecue, she says.

"In all my life, I've never seen it this bad. It's the worst — I've never ever seen it look like this."

Thomas, who now works for the state Department of Natural Resources, helped in the cleanup after Hurricane Katrina devastated parts of the Gulf Coast two years ago.

"This is just as devastated as it was after Katrina, just on a smaller scale," she says. "This flood didn't just knock down trees. It took them away. Whole trees are gone from our yard. Huge trees."

Up the road, a Red Cross truck — the words "Disaster Relief" emblazoned on the side — idles in a few inches of mud. Its exhaust is warm and strangely inviting in the cold, which seems to have descended overnight. Five or six farmers gather around the window, their shoulders hunched against the cold, their hands in their pockets. Their breaths coming out in great white clouds, as if they were snorting horses.

Still struggling

It's been a week since much of Southwest Washington flooded, but for many of the folks out in the Boistfort Valley, survival is still a daily struggle, says Chief Sgt. Gene Seiber, commander of the Lewis County Emergency Operations Center.

"Many don't have any clothes, access to food or clean water. Many haven't had access to a shower. Lots of these people are still in basic survival mode," he said. "We need to get these people help now. Blankets. Tarps. Water. Food."

Seiber estimates that, based on the number of phone calls received at the Lewis County Emergency Operations Center and the Centralia Emergency Operations Center, there are 1,000 homes that have been damaged or destroyed.

"We don't know how many people are displaced at this point," he says. "But judging from 1,000 homes? We can start to imagine from there."

The Lewis County Sheriff's Office and the Centralia Police Department continue to partner with the Red Cross, United Way, Salvation Army and Washington National Guard to provide "basic survival needs to the folks who need it," Seiber says. Only after people have drinking water and shoes can they start worrying about getting grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency or restarting their businesses, he says.

"It's a take-it-day-by-day kind of thing right now," he says.

Haley Edwards: 206-464-2745 or hedwards@seattletimes.com