GRANITE FALLS – Residents of the Blue Spruce Grove neighborhood made their way back home Tuesday to see what they have lost.
For many people who fled from the rising Stillaguamish River on Monday, it was their first chance to inspect the damage wrought by a runaway river.
People who live in other flood-ravaged sections of Snohomish County may get their initial glimpses today.
Blue Spruce Grove is two miles northwest of Granite Falls in one of the county’s hardest-hit areas.
Christy Glonek, 58, returned home to find a silt-covered pool table in her basement and two large chum salmon dead on the driveway.
Floodwaters overwhelmed her 4-foot-high retaining wall and piles of sandbags. The water ripped the back door from its hinges, leaving a 7-foot-high watermark downstairs and a washing machine tipped over.
“We’ve been flooded before, but never like this,” she said.
Glonek has lived 25 years in the development along the banks of the South Fork Stillaguamish River.
She led Mike Morales of Rainbow International, a Woodinville-based restoration and cleaning franchise, on a tour of her waterlogged split-level home.
“In my opinion, that is every bit as bad as anything you would see anywhere,” said Morales, who has been in the restoration business since 1981.
Glonek’s son-in-law, Wayne Perrigoue, a Granite Falls contractor, was already assessing how to make the repairs Tuesday morning.
A few houses away, Morales had to break the news to Jenny Skelton that she should plan to move her family out of their rambler for a month or two.
That’s a tall order for the family, which in addition to her husband includes two children, two step-children who live there part time, two dogs, two cats and a bird.
“My house was built 40 years ago,” she said. “This is the first time it has ever flooded.”
In a one-story home, a flood affects all the living space.
It was heartbreaking for Skelton, who has spent months with her husband remodeling the inside. The week-old forest green carpet was covered with silt.
Floodwaters raise health and safety issues, Morales said. The water is a soup of dirt, contaminated runoff and bacteria. Wall and floor coverings must be removed to clean and disinfect the house.
Even when that is done, it will take a long time to get the house back in the shape it was in before the flood, Morales said.
“She put her heart and soul into it, and now it’s been destroyed,” he said.
Glonek and Skelton knew their neighbors were hurting, too.
In Skelton’s side yard is a piano that neighbors couldn’t move to high ground fast enough.
The neighbors worked together as the flood approached, and they consoled one another afterward.
Glonek urged Morales to take care of her neighbor first.
“Their home is more important than my downstairs,” she said.
Reporter Eric Stevick: 425-339-3446 or stevick@heraldnet.com.
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