Struggle continues for thousands of flooding victims

Take Interstate 5 south to Chehalis and exit at Highway 6. Drive west 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; 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 cracked and peeled back like giant, blackened banana peels.

Now, take a right on Ceres Road. You'll see a double-wide that shows a high-water mark above its windows — 10 or 12 feet up. The trailer is off its foundation; the roof is limp. Its contents have been dragged to the street: a stove, a muddied oven, a refrigerator.

Farmers wearing red-plaid jackets, yellow waterproof pants and orange duck-hunting caps wade into their fields.

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

Bridge is just gone

Back toward where the entrance to Rainbow Falls State Park used to be — almost at the city of Pe Ell now — there's a crowd. Families pull over to gape: The suspension bridge (the "hanging bridge") isn't there anymore. Just got taken away, whispers one woman. "Gone. Not even a trace."

Zoanne Thomas, 41, used to come to Rainbow Park for family reunions. She helped clean up after Hurricane Katrina.

"This is just as devastated ... 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."

Still struggling

A week after much of Southwest Washington flooded, many in the Boistfort Valley are still struggling, 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, 1,000 homes 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."

Wind wreaked havoc

On the Washington coast, the destruction is still being calculated, and the cleanup has just begun. Here, it was mostly the wind that wreaked havoc, knocking down trees and cutting electricity.

Twelve miles south of Westport, the storm kicked up waves and wind that destroyed Ladonna Hartke's house on what is called Washaway Beach. It's believed to be the fastest-eroding section on the Pacific Coast. In the past 200 years, it's lost about 65 feet a year to the sea.

Last Monday, Hartke woke before the sun rose to find wind and waves nearly at her door, where the day before there had been nearly 30 feet of land.

The waves started to erode the land from beneath the foundation. First, the two-car garage went into the water, then the four-bedroom house.

"I've lived here for 12 years," Hartke said, "and it happened in three hours. I had faith that it would stay because I wasn't ready to leave."

Hartke is waiting for an insurance agent to visit and in the meantime is staying in a motel.

Sunday, she was at the house, keeping warm by a fire. Some of her belongings were stored in various campers and covered areas, but she wasn't able to salvage everything.

The waves also took her red minivan, and half of her 12 chickens are missing.

"My friends told me 'don't worry, you are going to be there for years,' " she said. "I wanted to believe it, and I did."

Wind, rain in Raymond

Residents of Raymond, about 60 miles west of Centralia, were hit by both wind and flooding.

The roof on the three-story American Legion building was ripped off in the winds, then the rain soaked one floor after another, until it reached the yarn shop of Ruth McCully and her mother, Edna Latta.

Both were there Sunday, dealing with soaked carpets, destroyed inventory and ruined display cases.

McCully said the flood started Dec. 2. Outside, the streets filled with water, almost thigh-deep at times. She was caught at home, trapped by downed trees and flooding.

McCully has insurance, and a cleanup crew hired by the building's owner has arrived from Texas. Their job is to disinfect and dry the building from the inside out, using 300 to 400 fans and dehumidifiers. Because the building was flooded by rain, and not dirty water, it should be salvageable. But that's little comfort.

"We spent five years building this up, and it was taken away just like that," McCully said.

Haley Edwards: 206-464-2745 or hedwards@seattletimes.com. Tricia Duryee: 206-464-3283 or tduryee@seattletimes.com