As the Cowlitz River began to rise earlier this month, one group of riverside residents and property owners near Packwood worked fast to brace their neighborhood from the raging waterway.
Around Dec. 9, a group of homeowners in High Valley Neighborhood 8/11 noticed river water was making it through a rock berm, or bank, meant to protect the nearby homes from the river.
Just days later, truckloads of rocks and trees recently felled on a neighbor's property were being used to create a new berm to keep the water from flowing through nearby properties.
A bit of luck brought together the necessary elements — a Puyallup-based contractor, a representative of the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife, the local fire district and some willing land owners — at the right time to put the construction in motion, secure verbal permits and start a race against the Cowlitz River.
In the second week of December, starting on Dec. 8 around the initial peak of the recent east county flood, a group of local residents including Donna O’Claire and Jeaneva Hallett began walking the neighborhood to keep an eye on the Cowlitz River as it began to swell. A day later on Tuesday, Dec. 9, they noticed white cloudy water bubbling up into puddles around the neighborhood. At the same time, groundwater began to seep into the crawl space of a neighbor’s house.
Following the pools and puddles of water, the residents found water seeping through the rip rap meant to protect the neighborhood. Rip rap is a common term for a small bank or berm built of rocks and other materials meant to prevent soil erosion. This one had been built around 2016, according to O’Claire, but didn't seem like it would hold up to the coming floods.
“It was sufficient at the time because it was just holding back a stream, not the river,” O’Claire said. “And we noticed that the river now was coming through that berm in more than one place and more than just a trickle.”
Additional lots had extra rock and other materials constructed into permitted banks over the years following as well, protecting multiple houses. But as the Cowlitz grew earlier this month, as many as 19 properties, including some that had already invested in building up a bank, found themselves closer and closer to the river.
At the time, more intense flooding was expected the following day on Wednesday, Dec. 10, and with the amount of debris swept into the river, it was uncertain where the water would settle. Before the flooding, bits of forest and green space separated many of the homes from the flow of the Cowlitz River.
Behind those 19 properties, closest to the water, were also more than 100 others that could also be at risk should the river breach the banks that hold it back.
In preparation for even worse flooding, O’Claire and Hallett arranged to have two truckloads of rock delivered on Dec. 10 as the river began to rise once more toward its final peak on Wednesday. But the trucks couldn't make it in time, blocked by detours and closures on U.S. Highway 12.
After hearing the rock would be delayed, the local group brought a member of the local fire district and other residents to the site of the leaking berm to show them the situation. At that time, a neighbor said he could have a friend bring rock from Puyallup. Before long, five truckloads appeared and were used to create roads to the bank and shore up the existing bank.
According to O’Claire, the contractor working on the project, Greg Pelland, said after the initial truckloads that the bank would need bigger rocks and more materials as waters rose. Around the same time, residents spotted a member of the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife and brought him to the site for a verbal permit approval.
As construction continued, the crew found out they would need to use trees to create jetties out into the river to slow water and create fish habitat. As luck would have it, a neighbor had just cleared trees off of his property and still had the fallen trees around.
“We call the couple of people that get his phone number and get his phone number and call him. ‘Can we use their trees?’ And he said, ‘absolutely,’” O’Claire said. “So there we have all the trees we need to meet the expectations. Things just fell into place. People were just there. It just happened. It was truly a miracle.”
As rock loads continued to come in with heavy equipment to continue the work, O’Claire and Hallett ran to the bank to put some seed money into a new account to show their partners they meant business. On Friday, Dec. 12, the duo opened a bank account with Gesa Credit Union, depositing a significant starting sum into the account taken from their own retirement funds.
Work on the new berm continued over the next two weeks, being slowed down briefly the week after the flood by a large wind storm that took down powerlines in the area. By Thursday, Dec. 18, crews had finished widening the existing berm and, by the next day, the new bank construction was connected to the old one with the addition of small jetties.
The last of the work took place earlier this week with final fine work and cleanup starting on Monday, Dec. 22, the same day that O’Claire and Hallett received a hard copy of a hydrological permit from the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife.
Now that the race against the river has come to an end for now, the neighbors face a new challenge in raising the last of the money needed to pay for the work and rounding up support from others in the community. According to Hallett and O’Claire, the work is expected to come with a bill of around $350,000 or more. After a meeting with the local fire department, they also discovered financial support from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) would not bankroll the project, seeing it as preventative work not recovery.
“Lonnie Goble, the fire chief, has been talking with a meeting with Department of Emergency Management, and he told us yesterday, the probability of us getting support from either the county or FEMA is 3%,” O’Claire said. “The biggest reason why is this action was preventative.”
While receiving an initial permit from one state agency, the new berm will also likely still need additional permits from the county or even other state agencies.
Now that the race is over, the real work will begin.
Even so, O’Claire and Hallett remarked at how happy they were to see people come together in the face of a disaster.
“Even the homes that just have like a shop that they live in, even those are worth more than $500,000 a piece. Just to save in one home was worth it,” O’Claire said.
