INDEX — Long before their next-door neighbor’s house crumbled into the North Fork Skykomish River on Monday, Arlene and Donald McDonald knew their own home was on similarly precarious footing.
The couple has been trying
for the past few years to arrange a government buyout of their home on Skyko Drive, where they’ve lived since 1988. They have pleaded with elected officials and government agencies for help, before the river swallows up much more of their land. While some have said buying the McDonalds’ house and other vulnerable properties might be a good idea, nobody’s made any promises.
“I’ve had everybody up here, from (U.S.) Sen. Patty Murray’s office to who knows who,” Arlene McDonald said. “And no results.”
The McDonalds, who are in their mid-70s, moved in after Donald McDonald retired from his job as a custodian with the Seattle Public Schools. He still works some days at an automotive garage in Seattle, and she does housecleaning.
Over two decades, the McDonalds have seen a few hundred feet of backyard eaten away by the rushing water. Things accelerated after the river jumped channels, eroding the bank underneath their land.
On Thursday, Donald McDonald pointed to the churning water 12 to 15 feet below the edge of his yard.
“This whole section is going to be eaten away,” he said. “It may not do it this year, but next year …”
They say the river eventually could wipe out 13 lots in their neighborhood.
Next-door neighbor Mary Lindenberger showed pictures of the house she lost to the river this week after heavy weekend rains. They were taken with a digital camera around 4 p.m. Sunday. Parts of the home had floated away Dec. 12.
Lindenberger’s late husband, Manfred Lindenberger, had bought the A-frame cabin in 1971, then added on. The getaway from their Seattle home was a place where he could sit peacefully, looking over the river and a steep, forested slope on the opposite bank. A retired dentist, Manfred Lindenberger painted there with watercolors and acrylics. He died in 2008 at the age of 94.
The pictures from Sunday show cozy hardwood floors and stainless-steel appliances, the result of a remodeling job completed in 2008. But look closely and there’s a gap between the floor and the wall through which the raging Skykomish is visible.
Another picture shows the house teetering on the bank.
Lindenberger said she stuck around until 4:15 or 4:30 that afternoon.
“I started feeling it was time to leave,” she said.
Around 5:45 a.m. the next day, the house fell in. Donald McDonald said he went outside, where he could hear the house giving way in the darkness.
Lindenberger said she has federal flood insurance. While she expects to get something for the house, she knows she won’t be compensated for land.
“It’s just totally amazing what rivers can do,” she said.
The McDonalds’ house sits in a floodway, an area adjacent to waterways where nothing can be built. Those rules weren’t in place in 1980, when their house went up. Those rules took effect in 1984.
“On a floodway, you would not be able to build a home under today’s standards,” county permitting manager Tom Rowe said. “We know there are, in fact, many structures out there that were built prior to the flood-hazard regulations going into effect.”
County Council Chairman Dave Somers, whose district includes Index, is sympathetic to the McDonalds’ plight.
“If there is an opportunity to buy out some of those properties along the river, we’d love to do it,” Somers said. “At one point, these buildings were allowed by the county, so there’s a shared responsibility there.”
If the house or its septic system slips into the current, there’s also the potential for damage downstream, he said.
Other officials have said it would be hard to justify to taxpayers the expense of buying out riverside homes.
“Its very difficult to arrange and fund a flood buyout,” public works director Steve Thomsen said. “It usually takes a very, very large emergency event where there’s a lot of federal money and the community says at the same time, ‘Yeah, we want to be bought out.'”
Also, everyone has to convince federal officials that there’s a public benefit.
“It usually takes years for that to happen,” Thomsen said. “I’ll admit that there’s a lot of people who don’t do it because the amount of effort it takes is large.”
To protect houses by shoring up the bank would take an enormous amount of time and effort, because of engineering, permitting and other requirements, Thomsen said. It might not even be possible for heavy equipment to get into the area around the McDonalds’ house.
In the past, the county and other government agencies have taken over land where flooding was a constant problem.
In 2004, the county oversaw the buyout of 10 landowners in the Chatham Acres Country Club, near Darrington. The North Fork Stillaguamish River had inundated the neighborhood several times since jumping channels in 1999. The federal government covered 75 percent of the $1.8 million purchase. The state and the homeowners paid the rest.
The county also has bought lots in the Skyview Tracts area on the Skykomish River on the southern edge of Sultan. There are five federally funded acquisition projects now pending throughout the county.
Back in Index, fences dangle over the river on lots near the McDonalds’ house. Donald McDonald marveled at the river’s power, comparing the sound of the rocks being moved by the current to the rumbling of a bowling alley.
Later, he gestured to the neighborhood and said, “In 10 years, it may not be here.”
Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465, nhaglund@heraldnet.com.
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