Idaho Flooding Knocks Out Wells As Flood Recedes, Residents Clean Up And Scramble For Drinkable Water

The Coeur d’Alene River receded Friday while Silver Valley residents flocked to stores to buy water.

Two days of flooding damaged several public wells in Shoshone County. Facing a long weekend of cleanup complicated by orders to boil water, residents reached for the Evian and Perrier.

Stein’s IGA in Kellogg sold 100 times more bottled water than usual Thursday and Friday. Yoke’s Pac ‘N Save Foods down the street sold 225 cases in 18 hours. It usually sells a case a day.

Basements began to drain and floating firewood settled into muck Friday as the river dropped from a high of 47.3 feet - 4 feet above flood stage - to below 43 feet.

“It’s been dropping like the dickens,” Enaville resident Perry Brown said. He walked into his yard without waders for the first time in 36 hours Friday.

Also Friday, residents began the cleanup. Some dragged furniture outside to dry. Others brought furniture in from high ground storage areas.

Brown planned to spend the weekend mopping his basement, after chest-high water receded into ankle-deep goo. He hadn’t put away the rowboat docked against his front porch.

Latour Creek Road re-opened to truck traffic about 1 p.m. after more than 100 families were stranded above it’s flooded belly south of Interstate 90. By nightfall officials predicted only a half-dozen families in the Dudley area immediately east of Rose Lake would still be trapped.

Susan Morden’s house was dry, but a foot of water still ran over the road and kept her inside for the second day.

“Oh, I’ve just been getting stuff ready for Christmas,” she said, adding that this will probably be the first year the holidays won’t catch her unprepared.

A well-prepared Betty Beckton relaxed Thursday and Friday, babysat neighbor kids and worked on crafts. She had a cabinet full of medicine, a week’s stockpile of food and no worries.

“I’d much rather be able to go out, but it’s really not that bad,” she said.

A.J. Folts, owner of Cataldo’s Bear Paw Country Store, had a banner day selling cola and cigarettes. “Everybody was nervous,” he said. “It’s a Marlboro and Pepsi county.”

County activity slowed to a crawl by sundown, said Snakepit resort owner Joe Peak. Locals didn’t want to drive after dark.

“You never know where there’s been enough current to push a Cottonwood tree over onto the road,” he said.

Saturday, a Kootenai County sheriff’s crew will remove thousands of sandbags from the Cataldo area, but will keep them close.

“We’re going to keep them in a ready state,” said Bill Schwartz, county disaster director. “The way the weather is behaving, I wouldn’t bet on anything.”

Weather forecasts call for cooling temperatures, which many hoped would turn any future rainfall to snow.

“There’s a full moon and clear skies and we’re praying for a good frost,” Peak said.

To the south, the St. Joe River receded slowly but dropped below flood stage early Friday.

Residents watched ripples in the watered-down flatlands that signaled a continuing retreat, said Benewah County disaster coordinator George Currier.

“We had no unexpected loss of property,” he said, adding that 12 camper trailers either sunk or were destroyed when they rushed downstream.

“Those people should have known better,” he said. “You can’t beat Mother Nature. Best you can hope for is to fight her to a draw.”

, DataTimes