1996 — Feb 5-9, Heavy rain, flooding, mudslides, Pacific Northwest, esp. western OR — 9

–9  Blanchard tally of State breakouts below.

 

Oregon           (8)

–8  Rose. “Remembering Oregon’s epic 1996 flood: 20 years ago.” The Oregonian, 2-5-2016.

–1  Feb 5, Philomath area. Rockslide onto truck; Tom E. Otter, 25, of Waldport.

–1  Feb 7. Monmouth area. Car goes into drainage ditch; Verna Wenger, 84, of Corvallis.

–1  Feb 7. Scio. Drowning; Amber Bargfrede, 8, slipped into culvert getting mail at home.

–1  Feb 7. Linn County; drowning; Doug E. Andrews, 45, after abandoning his car.

–1  Feb 7. Troutdale; drowning; Jacqueline Jank; slide pushed home into Sandy River.

–1  Feb 8. Drowning; Lois Schuerman, 62, of Albany, when her car went into ditch.

–2  Feb 9. Salem area; brothers from Woodburn drowned; drove into pool of water.[1]

–7  Sullivan. Oregon’s Greatest Natural Disasters. 2008, p. 141.

 

Washington    (1)

—>1  Assoc. Press. “Portland avoids flooded downtown,” Joplin Globe, MO, 2-10-1996, p. 1.

 

Narrative Information

 

Sullivan: “….The 1996 flood killed seven people in Oregon, forced 22,000 to evacuate their homes and left behind $400 million in damage….” [p. 141]

 

“In January, cold storms dumped as much as two feet of snow a day in the mountains and foothills….Then came the ‘Pineapple Express,’ a warm, wet front from the tropics. Temperatures shot up 40 degrees. In just four days (February 6-9), the storm dumped a record-breaking 27.88 inches of warm rain on Laurel Mountain in the Coast Range. Records were also topped in Astoria, Corvallis, Hillsboro, Portland, and Oregon City. In the Cascades, melting snow doubled the runoff. Streams went wild. The flow at Hood River, for example, swelled by a factor of 20 in just two days….” [p. 142]

 

“In Tillamook the Wilson River crested 5.4 feet over flood stage — a foot higher than the previous record. Coast Guard rescue boats motoring through the city stalled unexpectedly. One boat hit its propeller on the roof of a sunken car. Another had its propeller snarl in a barbed wire fence. That boat’s crew had been on their way to rescue a marooned farm family. Instead the crew wound up marooned too, forced to spend the night in the family’s flooded home….” [p. 144]

 

Feb 10: “Portland, Ore. — Strewn with breakaway boat docks, logs and even a refrigerator, the bloated Willamette River mounted one final surge Friday [Feb 9], flooding homes and businesses south of Portland but sparing the downtown.

 

“The sun broke through after four days of rain that combined with melting snow to swamp highways, unleash mudslides and force tens of thousands of people to flee their homes in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana…

 

“President Clinton declared disasters in Oregon and Washington counties, providing federal assistance to flood victims.

 

“Three people died and two were missing in Oregon. At least one person died in Washington.

 

“Though the Willamette churned through Portland at its highest level in 32 years, Oregon’s largest city was spared the worst when the Army Corps of Engineers temporarily reined in the flow thundering through Bonneville Dam, 30 miles up the Columbia River. That made room for the surging water of the Willamette, which runs north through Portland into the Columbia. Still, flooding along the Columbia halted shipping in and out of the Port of Portland, the nation’s largest grain-exporting port and the West Coast’s second busiest. Portions of all five terminals at the port were under water. They city’s water supply was running dangerously low, and city officials said orders to boil all drinking water would be issued by Sunday [Feb 11] unless consumption is reduced by 30 percent to 50 percent.

 

“Salem water users also were asked to conserve. ‘People are not conserving,’ said Frank Maulding, Salem public works director. Many other towns were reporting water shortages, and four were without water altogether because treatment plants had flooded.

 

“To the south, as Willamette Valley residents waited anxiously through the morning, the river crested at one town after another — at Corvallis 3½ feet above flood stage, Oregon City 18 feet above, Portland 10.5 feet above. In downtown Portland, the Willamette crested at 28.5 feet, just inches below the sea wall. It never reached  the barrier of plywood and plastic sheets erected atop the wall by hundreds of volunteers Thursday….

 

“Just south of Portland, in the affluent suburb of Lake Oswego, floodwaters from the Tualatin River flanked a small dam and rushed into the manmade lake in the center of town, pushing it over its banks and spilling into the Willamette. Dozens of homes were flooded, some to their rooftops.

 

“Nearby, several blocks of downtown Tualatin were under as much as 2 feet of water; just to the east, in Clackamas County, about 2,000 people were evacuated. On the northern outskirts of Oregon City, 2 to 3 feet of water covered the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, and the A-frame that houses the Chamber of Commerce was tilted up on one submerged corner….In the Salem suburb of Keizer, all but about 2,000 of the 12,000 people evacuated from their homes Thursday were allowed to return Friday afternoon….

 

“Washington Gov. Mike Lowry said his state had exhausted its supply of 300,000 sandbags and the Army Corps of Engineers was sending almost half a million more.

 

“In southeastern Washington, officials said flooding could destroy 20 percent of the winter wheat acreage. Across the region, farm and ranch damage was expected to run into the millions of dollars. At least 1,000 dairy cows drowned in Tillamook County on the Oregon coast, said Jim McMullen of the Tillamook County Creamer Association. He said he knew of at least two farmers who lost entire herds.

 

“Flooding near the isolated hamlets of Jewell and Elsie in Oregon’s extreme northwestern corner swept away homes, vehicles and livestock. Airborne Coast Guard crews spotted dead cows floating down the Nehalem River.” (Associated Press. “Portland avoids flooded downtown,” Joplin Globe, MO, 2-10-1996, pp. 1 and A14.)

 

Sources

 

Associated Press. “Portland avoids flooded downtown,” Joplin Globe, MO, 2-10-1996, pp. 1 and A14. Accessed 12-10-2017 at: https://newspaperarchive.com/joplin-globe-feb-10-1996-p-1/

 

Rose, Joseph. “Remembering Oregon’s epic 1996 flood: 20 years ago.” The Oregonian, 2-5-2016. Accessed 12-10-2017 at:

http://www.oregonlive.com/history/2016/02/oregon_flood_of_1996_20_years.html

 

Sullivan, William L. Oregon’s Greatest Natural Disasters. Eugene, OR: Navillus Press, 2008.

[1] Victims identified as Abelino Santiago Satey Gonon, 26, and Abelino Satey Gonon, 24.