Living at the mercy of the Stillaguamish River

Published 11:11 pm Sunday, February 8, 2009

STANWOOD — Carole Korelin knew better. She loved the meandering Old Stilly, but she was well aware of the hazards of the river at flood stage.

In 1990, she lived on a boat along the Stillaguamish River dike at the south edge of Stanwood. Though she had few concerns about the river jumping its banks, Korelin watched as record flooding that year displaced her neighbors on Leque and Thomle roads. She remembers the devastation and the debris.

Even so, after the 1990 disaster she bought one of the flood-damaged older homes just over the dike from her boat moorage.

A month after 3 feet of floodwater coursed through her basement and destroyed thousands of dollars worth of belongings, Korelin, 62, is still trying to put her life back together.

She’s quick to say, however, that she doesn’t consider herself a victim and that her story doesn’t involve injury, dead livestock or a lost home.

“I’ve always known flooding was a possibility here,” Korelin said. “But I got complacent.”

Petite with shoulder-length gray hair, Korelin enjoys camping, plays the Dobro guitar and loves her young grandson. She grew up in Seattle, spent many a summer at her parents’ cabin on Lake Goodwin and is just old enough to remember when Stanwood was a small town.

Located on the last big bend before the old river bed empties into Port Susan, her house offered Korelin a homecoming of sorts. From the back deck she can see Mount Baker, Mount Index and Three Fingers, along with the peaks’ reflections in the city’s water treatment pond. From the front porch she looks across the river and its southern route into the bay, bordered by the Olympics.

It’s a beautiful spot and great place to watch birds. Last week, though, the yard was still a ghostly gray from the river’s silt and the air was musty. Korelin’s cedar tree, camellia and holly bush sported silver branches, and mud glued itself like concrete to the front steps that climb 9 feet to the home’s main story.

Built in the early 1920s, the house had been a rental for many years. After buying it, Korelin spent lots of time and money replacing the ugly linoleum floor, dark paneling and kitchen fixtures.

At some point, she decided to finish off the basement, figuring she would just store a few things downstairs.

Even though it did little damage in her neighborhood, the flood of 2006 should have been a wake-up call.

By that time, though, half of her living space was in the basement. It housed an extra bedroom, the laundry room, water heater, computer, microwave, vacuum, sewing machine, extra clothing and storage for family heirlooms and antiques gleaned from her parents’ estate and from Korelin’s former second-hand shop.

“I should have known better,” she said.

The first week of January, the Stanwood area still was recovering from the recent heavy snowfall. The rain fell hard, the snowmelt was quick and the tide was high.

“The entire state was flooding, and it was obvious we were in danger, too,” she recalled.

On Jan. 7, Korelin moved her pickup truck to higher ground and drove off in her car to her job in Skagit County. After work, she made her regularly scheduled trip to her daughter’s house in Mukilteo to spend the night.

A neighbor called the next morning with warnings that Korelin’s beloved Old Stilly was filling up fast. He encouraged her to get home and told her to park in town and walk in.

“When I arrived, the first layer of floodwater was creeping my way. Floods here don’t just rush in. They creep. It was getting deeper.”

As she grabbed her mother’s favorite chair from the basement, Korelin got a call from friends asking if she wanted help. It was too late. As she turned off her electricity and propane tank, she saw neighbors and emergency services personnel driving by.

“They were hauling ass, worried about the road washing out,” she said. “I grabbed a change of clothes and hopped in one of the trucks. I abandoned everything.”

On Jan. 9, as city officials sighed with relief because downtown Stanwood had been spared, Korelin pulled on barn boots and walked through flood water rushing over her road. The chocolate-colored water ran into her boots, too, as she rounded the bend and her house came into view.

“It was stunning. I kept thinking, I have to get in there. But the water was too cold and too deep.”

Korelin stood and talked with neighbors for a while. The stinking water was crushing her garden and seeping into her basement.

“I was glad my grandson didn’t come along. He would have been very upset,” she said.

In the morning, Korelin returned in borrowed hip boots, which she still needed even though the water was beginning to recede. Finally able to pull open the basement door, she saw antique dolls from her childhood floating face down in the dirty water.

Most of the next week was spent tending to essentials such as righting the propane tanks, which had been knocked askew by the flood. Korelin picked up free dump passes from the county, took a load of dirty linens and bleach to the laundromat. She rallied the help of friends and began the task of hauling away belongings contaminated and ruined by the flood.

Knee deep in muddy river silt, Korelin was startled one day by a county emergency management official asking her to fill out damage assessment forms.

“I was a basket case. I couldn’t even pick up the paperwork without covering it with some nasty mud,” she said.

Eventually Korelin did report her losses. Her misfortune was included in the case Gov. Chris Gregoire presented when she asked President Barack Obama to declare parts of the state a disaster area, which he granted Jan. 30.

Korelin’s life began to improve when dozens of volunteers from the Camano Chapel showed up Jan. 16 to lend a hand in her neighborhood.

A member of the church, Stillaguamish Flood Control District commissioner Tristan Klesick, was worried for his neighbors living just south of Stanwood city limits. They had suffered a lot and he wanted a local solution to a local problem, he told Korelin.

While women from the church supplied food, men hauled away mattresses, carpeting, the buffet owned by Korelin’s parents, other destroyed furniture and appliances. Women friends guided the effort, which ended with a power washing and a good cleaning with a shop vacuum.

“The Camano Chapel folks made a huge difference. I can’t thank them or my family and friends enough because they gave me hope and some control over my environment. It didn’t feel so overwhelming,” Korelin said.

An effort organized by the Salvation Army the next day brought a half-dozen volunteers from Home Depot in Burlington to Korelin’s house. Using Red Cross decontamination kits, they washed and bleached everything that was salvageable from the basement. On Sunday, the husband of one of the volunteers fixed Korelin’s fence while her friends tore out the wet wallboard and insulation in the basement and set up a fan and dehumidifier to keep mold at bay.

Korelin doesn’t know if she will apply for federal flood disaster aid.

“There are many people who need it more than I do. I am focusing on how lucky I am,” she said.

She does plan, however, to become more involved with community efforts to deal with flooding. She attended a meeting Thursday sponsored by the flood district and was happy she went.

“I want to be able to help others, too. I love my neighborhood.”

A camping tent covered the floor in Korelin’s kitchen and salvaged stuff was piled high in all the other rooms. Last week, she still felt disoriented and said she knows she needs to get rid of more of her belongings.

“Your home is your safety zone. When that’s taken away you are thrown into a crisis.”

Next time Korelin’s beloved Old Stilly “spits,” she wants to be ready to just walk away and come home when it’s over.

In the meantime, Korelin is waiting for a hard rain to wash away the gray silt from her yard.

Reporter Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427 or gfiege@heraldnet.com.