OSO – It’s a new era for the folks who live on Steelhead Drive.
Last week’s massive landslide on the North Fork Stillaguamish River has moved the river noticeably closer to their homes.
Worse, because the river now chokes down to a narrow channel as it makes a new, hard left turn around the Steelhead neighborhood, it could easily dam up with logs and other debris.
Officials fear such a dam would force the river out of its banks yet again, this time cutting a new path right through the neighborhood Gail Thompson and her neighbors want to see saved.
“I never expected to have the river at my front door,” Thompson said. “Now we have riverfront property.”
Thompson and the 10 or so neighbors who live on Steelhead Drive were celebrating their good fortune Tuesday after workers with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Snohomish County worked all night to armor the river bank closest to their homes.
“I don’t think any of us are afraid, I think we’re thankful,” she said. “I think we bit the bullet.”
All of the homes in the line of fire were saved – for now.
Work crews dropped 120 truckloads of rocks along about 1,000 feet of riverbank, said Doug Weber, manager of the corps’ emergency program. They worked through the night – 20 hours straight.
Since the Sunday night and Monday morning river flows that threatened the Steelhead neighborhood fell well short of being an official flood, the expectation is the river could get much higher in the future, said Steve Thomsen, acting county public works director.
“It’s hard to know how the river’s going to react in a real flood,” he said. “We’ve got a brand new river.”
At minimum, a flood will likely send sheets of water washing over the Steelhead neighborhood, Thomsen said.
Such waves of water are common in low-lying areas all over Snohomish County, and, besides getting everything wet, aren’t usually dangerous, he said.
A Stilly flood gauge in Arlington may not give Oso residents adequate warning of a flood, so the county is considering putting a flood gauge near the Steelhead neighborhood, Thomsen said.
The National Weather Service issued a flood watch for Snohomish County for Tuesday that was supposed to end about 4 a.m. today.
Overnight rain wasn’t expected to be that heavy, but the flood watch was issued because the rivers already were so full, especially the Stilly at Oso, said Johnny Burg, a weather service meteorologist.
The rain continued to cause minor slides and road restrictions countywide, county officials said.
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