POMEROY — “We are lucky the flood was as easy on us as it was,” said Mrs. Irene Poulson, still trying Wednesday to dry out her home following two recent floods which drowned the town in mud.
“Some people who lived over by the golf course lost everything they had — sometimes people drown — and I just think we were lucky.”
Mrs. Poulson lives in a rented home off Main Street at Pomeroy’s east end, near where several bulk fertilizer tanks floated into a bridge, damming Pataha Creek and forcing a torrent through residential sections Jan. 9. A mattress sogs wetly on her mud-covered lawn amid other debris.
Another resident blames a different source for the water which left two feet of mud on his lawn, waist-deep muck in his basement, and which ruined his appliances and his furnace.
“It was the runoff from the hills,” he said. “It snowed — then it rained like hell and the ground was too frozen to soak any of it up. That one little storm sewer we’ve got isn’t worth a damn.” He preferred to not be identified. “We have to do something, because next time it might be worse.”
“They’re a lot more willing to do something now than they were a year ago,” Mayor Chas W. Shumaker told representatives of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Office of Emergency Preparedness and U.S. Rep. Michael McCormack, D-Richland.
The mayor had been asked by corps representative W. E. Sivley, Walla Walla, whether the citizens were aroused enough to “do something.”
They conferred Wednesday to outline the possible extent of emergency help and later long-range flood prevention.
“This has happened three or four times in the last several years,” the mayor said, “and I think that public pressure to prevent another flood is getting pretty powerful.”
One problem is the economics of the situation, according to Sivley. “The corps can’t undertake any project unless the benefits exceed the cost,” he said.
The corps left the impression that concrete lining of the creek might be prohibitively expensive.
A rock-lined channel would be more feasible, but would require widening. This would take yards away from some homes, he said, and would probably require the replacement of bridges.
A survey, if requested, would give a better indication.
Clearing and snagging to allow the stream to handle more water appears much more feasible, they said.
“What about the runoff from the hills?” asked William McRae, a city councilman. “Would the corps be able to help with that too?”
“We would have to look at that in detail,” said Duane R. Taylor, another corps representative.
According to the engineers, a concrete ditch to channel the creek through town could cost $2 million for the two-mile project.
The city isn’t sure who is to blame for the condition of the now-restricted channel.
“Who owns the creek?” asked the mayor.
Told that it was probably private property, he wondered if creekside homeowners should take care of the project.
“That would be hard to enforce,” he said.
Although the town is a proposed disaster zone, only governmental units and business could benefit directly from presidential designation of the city as a major disaster zone.
Private citizens, many of whom sustained heavy losses, are still either dependent upon their own resources or upon grants from the Red Cross.
One family lost a freezer-full of flooded meat in their basement. When the waters rose downstairs, the freezer rose too, floating upward until it bumped into the basement celling. When it came down, and the electricity came back on, the meat was spoiled.
A crew of 20 job corpsmen from the Cottonwood Civilian Center arrived Wednesday afternoon, and planned to begin helping clear city streets Thursday morning.
An official damage estimate for the Wednesday meeting placed damage at $725,290, but was incomplete for private homes. Itemized damages included $196,800 for the Garfield County Road Department, $150,800 for the city, $9,500 for the Pomeroy school district, largely to a silted-in cinder track and, $209,090 to private firms and individuals, including 78 damaged homes.
This story was published in the Jan. 21, 1971, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.
