By Karen S. Carter
Wednesday, January 26, 2022 10:29 am
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Cleanup continues after the flood
Four flood events impacted the area
The 2022 year blew in on major storms which flooded the coast. Team Rubicon is in the county to assist with the flood damage clean up which is estimated to take up to another month to finish.
During the stormy week, Pacific County had four flood events according to the Pacific County Emergency Management Director Scott McDougall.
"On the first night of the event we had about 6 inches of rain in an 8 hour period," he told the Herald. "We had four separate flood events. On Monday the 3rd, we had flooding in Raymond at the Barge. That was a blue sky flood event caused by tidal overflow." The high water went over Hwy 101, the roundabout in Raymond, and lower Peters street shutting down traffic for hours. This was worse than the normal high tide flooding.
"On Wednesday night and into Thursday morning we had about 6 inches of rain in about an 8 hour period," said McDougall. "That's more rain than our systems can deal with. You will hear a lot of people say 'Oh the storm drains were plugged! South Bend didn't maintain storm drains!' Well the fact of the matter is South Bend went through and made sure that all of their storm drains were cleaned out ahead of the storm. That's more water than anybody's storm drains can deal with.Then we had water from Central Ave in South Bend flowing out into the river. We had water on the flats in South Bend." This caused people to evacuate to high ground.
The third event took place that evening as it continued to rain according to McDougall. By Friday evening, 8 to 10 inches of rain fell in a 48 hour period. "That pushed the Willapa River to moderate flood stage - just shy of major flood stage, and it pushed the Naselle to major flood stage but shy of their record flood stage," said McDougall.
The fourth flood event took place on the Long Beach Peninsula the following week. The peninsula received around 14 to 16 inches of rain which filled the storm drains, saturated the soil, and invaded homes.
Currently, Team Rubicon is going through the county helping homeowners to clean up the flood damage to their homes. If you see the work team be sure to wave and give them a big thank you.