County to seek disaster help for flooding

A combination of heavy rain and melting snow from the Wallowa Mountains turned Eagle Creek into a wide-ranging torrent during the weekend just west of Richland. Flooding also caused major problems in nearby Pine Valley. (Submitted Photo by Tami Waldron)

“We’re still gathering data,” Mark Bennett, the county’s emergency manager, said this morning.

“We feel like we’ve already met the threshold (for an emergency declaration) for public infrastructure damage.”

No injuries have been reported, Bennett said.

He said he and other county officials exchanged multiple phone calls and e-mails with the governor’s office throughout the weekend.

“They’re well aware of what we have going on,” Bennett said.

About 9 a.m. today Bennett learned that a home along Highway 86 about 10 miles east of Halfway was in “imminent” danger of falling off a bluff and into Pine Creek.

The home is about one mile east of the North Pine Creek bridge, an area where crews from the Oregon Department of Transportation worked Friday and Saturday to prevent floodwaters from undercutting the highway.

Among major thoroughfares, the Wallowa Loop Road, Forest Road 39, sustained severe damage, and it’s likely to remain closed for a significant period, said Judy Wing, the Wallowa-Whitman’s public affairs officer.

The route, which is part of the Hells Canyon National Scenic Byway, will be closed during this weekend’s Hells Canyon Motorcycle Rally.

A Wallowa-Whitman engineer who surveyed the area from an airplane on Saturday saw five places where North Pine Creek had carried away at least half of the road width.

The worst damage was a 500-foot section where the entire road is gone.

There is no detour route. The only possible bypass, via Fish Lake Road (Forest Road 66) is not feasible because that road also sustained major damage and it too is closed indefinitely.

Although the county has yet to get estimates for replacing the two Pine Valley bridges that were demolished, Bennett said the cost could reach $2 million.

One bridge, on Gulick Lane, crosses Clear Creek.

The other, on Holbrook Creek Spur, crosses Pine Creek.

Although sections of those roads are closed indefinitely, local residents can use other roads to get to their destinations.

Crews from the Baker County Road Department finished hacking out a temporary road Sunday evening to reach about 10 families who had been stranded since Friday, when Clear Creek breached its banks in upper Pine Valley, said Jeff Smith, the county’s assistant roadmaster.

Bennett said an estimated 58 homes, some in Pine Valley and some in Eagle Valley, were either partially flooded or were isolated by floodwaters during the weekend.

Based on preliminary reports, though,  flood damage to homes apparently has been limited to basements and crawl spaces, and no homes have been made uninhabitable.

Smith, who has worked for the road department for 23 years, said damage in Pine Valley is more widespread than it was during the New Year’s Day Flood of 1997, when unusually warm weather and heavy rain melted mountain snow.

One place, though, has fared better during this flood: Highway 86 between Halfway and Oxbow.

In 1997 the highway was closed for a couple of days.

This year crews from the Oregon Department of Transportation worked Friday and Saturday to prevent high water from undercutting the highway about 13 miles east of Halfway.

The highway remains open, although workers will need to repair eroded shoulders, said Brad Payton of ODOT.

Pine Creek, measured near its mouth at Oxbow, more than doubled in volume from 5,110 cubic feet per second (cfs) on Thursday to 13,770 cfs on Saturday, before receding to 9,580 cfs on Sunday.

Water from Eagle Creek and Little Eagle Creek also has periodically flowed across Highway 86 about two miles west of Richland, but the depth was just a few inches and the highway has remained open there, Payton said.

Sections of at least a few other roads were closed this morning, and are likely to remain closed for some time.

Pine Creek washed away a 1,300-foot-long section of the Cornucopia Road above Pine Valley. Payton had no estimate for when that road, which although gravel is a state highway, will re-open.

Crews built a temporary road that allowed people who were stranded at the Cornucopia Lodge to return to the valley, but that route has been closed, Payton said.

Trent Luschen, Farm Service Agency executive director in Baker County, said this morning that he was preparing a preliminary disaster declaration request.

So far, Luschen said he hasn’t had any reports from farmers or ranchers of crop losses, but he will be talking to producers around the county and adding reports of crop losses as he hears them.

Bennett said he has heard estimates that 1,000 tons of hay could be lost in Eagle Valley due to flooding.

Luschen said the FSA has financial aid programs that could kick in if crop damage reports start mounting, but assistance for erosion control, which is widespread, is handled by the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) and local Soil and Water Conservation Districts.

Laurie Owens, NRCS executive director for Baker County, said she is preparing to submit an Emergency Watershed Protection (EWP) request for money from Congress.

“The flooding washed out numerous floodgates on irrigation ditches,” Owens said.

She said the next step in applying for EWP funds is for the district Soil and Water Conservation District Board to authorize NRCS to conduct a damage survey and assess a dollar amount of the damage.

She said Ron Alvarado, state NRCS director, is scheduled to arrive in Baker City Wednesday to look over the damage.

The Wallowa-Whitman National Forest has closed several roads due to flood damage. Forest Supervisor Steve Ellis also has prohibited the public from entering a swath of the Wallowa-Whitman in the Eagle Creek area on the south side of the Wallowa Mountains.

The closure area is bordered on the east by Forest Road 39 and on the west by Forest Road 77 (Eagle Creek Road).

The list of closures includes the Wallowa Mountain Loop Road between Highway 86 and Forest Road 66 (Fish Lake Road), as well as the entire Fish Lake Road.

The Anthony Lakes Highway was closed from the Wallowa-Whitman boundary to Anthony Lakes due to boulders and other debris on the road, but that section probably will re-open today, Wing said.

(The road remains closed beyond the ski area due to snow.)

Bennett said one of the obstacles county road department crews had to deal with was getting permission from state and federal officials to use heavy equipment in Clear and Pine creeks, both of which are critical habitat for the threatened bull trout.

In one case, a couple who live along Pine Creek had to wait for permission before calling in a bulldozer operator to divert the creek before it flooded their home, Bennett said.

The water did wash away about a chunk of their yard about 80 feet across, he said.

Smith, the assistant county roadmaster, said one of the department’s main concerns now is repairing a section of the Snake River Road just south of Richland.

Eagle Creek has undercut the paved road, leaving only one lane intact.

Smith said the road leading to Connor Creek Mine, near Brownlee Reservoir about 17 miles north of Huntington, washed out when the creek overtopped its channel.

A woman who was living at the mine was ill and needed to see a doctor, but county crews were able to carve out a detour so the miners could get around the washed out section of road, Smith said.

He said the road department’s 10-member crew amassed 340fi hours of overtime from Friday through Sunday.

“We’ve been running pretty hard,” Smith said.

Meat business damaged

A flash flood had pushed mud and water down Pine Creek, flooding the entire length of the Marlows’ property on Steele Hill Road.

Lori Marlow said today that water and mud were running through the buildings of their meat-cutting business, Pine Creek Custom Cutting, on Friday and it looked like the damage would be severe. Fortunately, the cutting room and cooler sit about 8 inches above ground and were not damaged in the flood. Their home also remained dry.

Lori said they had hand dug ditches earlier to prepare for the worst as the water started rising.

“My lovely parents came over to help,” she said.

Her parents are Dave and Dianne Wood. Their home just across Pine Creek remained dry.

She said her husband had been out checking the ditches Friday afternoon when the flash flood hit.

“We just had a river through our whole property,” Lori said. “Everything was under control and the next second it wasn’t.”

The Marlows have lived on the property for 10 years. Lori said that although they’ve had some flooding from the ditch above them in the past, it was much less severe and unlike Friday’s deluge, it was something they could deal with.

The Marlows didn’t let the flooding disrupt their graduation festivities honoring their daughter, Alicia, although several guests stayed at the motel instead of at their home. Their son, Michael, came home from Albany for the occasion and their other daughter, Amanda, came out from Baker City.

“I let them come home,” she said. “I told them ‘you can see my muddy mess.’ ”

The graduation ceremony went off without a hitch, and the Marlows gathered with friends and family at the Lions Hall in Halfway afterward. Then, rather than going back to the Marlows’ house, Lori said they all gathered at her parents’ home.

“We had a bonfire until midnight and then I came home and dealt with my mud,” she said. “We had a great time.”

Today they are continuing to recover from the flooding, graduation and all the company.

“It’s all a blur,” Lori said.

The Marlows have called the county seeking help to get the water flowing back into Pine Creek. Their neighbors also have offered their help.

In the meantime, the Marlows can come and go in their four-wheel drive truck and they are continuing to operate their home-based business. They are not encouraging customers to pick up their orders until the water level subsides.

Once the water is cleared, the Marlows will be busy cleaning up the mess left behind

“We have a summer-long project ahead of us,” Lori said.