When Water Becomes A Killer

John Laughery doesn’t live in the Entiat River Valley, but every day he thinks about flooding there.

A June 1972 storm made him a 19-year-old orphan.

Laughery, now 42 and living in Moses Lake, was driving up Entiat River Road to his parents’ cabin when he hit three feet of water.

“I knew something was amiss. Timber was broken like matchsticks. I slogged down to the cabin and, zippo, there was nothing there. I fell to my knees and collected my thoughts. My parents were gone.”

Steve and Betty Laughery, of Moses Lake, had built their retirement home on the Entiat River just a few months before. The interior wasn’t even finished.

Steve Laughery, 52, was the wellknown leader of a big band, Many Sounds of Nine. Betty, 49, raised seven children and was active in the Girl Scouts.

They were sleeping when a wall of water backed up at Preston Creek, reloaded and then blew out everything in its path.

Sixteen-year-old old Jim Laughery was in another room. He was knocked into the Entiat River clinging to his mattress and used it to raft three miles of rapids, John Laughery said.

“He was banged up from head to toe,” he recalled.

But he was alive.

Little else escaped. Even a 60-ton rock face at Preston Falls crumbled like a stale cookie and washed away.

The only parts left of a 1972 three-quarter ton pickup-camper that belonged to James Konstantine were the engine and the frame, “which was wrapped around a tree like a pretzel,” John Laughery said.

The bodies of James Konstantine and Steve Laughery were found a couple of weeks later downstream.

The bodies of Betty Laughery and Dee Konstantine never have been found.

Survivor Jim Laughery was on his honeymoon last week and could not be reached for comment.

“I think about it every day,” his brother said. “I still have nightmares.

“The shear destruction I saw was ungodly.”