Pend Oreille Flood Threat Abates River Peaked Early Saturday Without Causing Serious Damage
The worst appears to be over for flood-wary residents along the Pend Oreille River - and the worst never was all that bad.
There were some close calls and a few flooded basements, but the river peaked early Saturday morning at three feet above flood stage without causing serious damage. County officials had feared up to 75 houses were in danger of flooding.
The most visible sign of flooding Monday was a few hundred feet of state Highway 20, about 1-1/2 miles north of Cusick, that had been under water since Friday night. Water from a Pend Oreille River slough backed up about a quarter-mile across a large meadow.
State Transportation Department worker Brian Rice said the only casualty was a television truck. He said the driver pulled off the road to photograph the scene, not realizing the raised highway has no shoulder. The truck tipped sideways about 45 degrees, took on about a foot of water and had to be towed, Rice said.
On the other side of the river, about 10 miles north, water lapped harmlessly within a few feet of a couple of sandbagged houses in the Riverbend Estates subdivision.
“The old-timers, they knew to build back this far,” resident Mike Johnson said as he and friends watched the flood from his high-and-dry deck. “The new ones, they just had to try.”
Other old-timers who knew to keep their distance were members of the Kalispel Tribe, whose reservation runs along the river for 10 miles between Riverbend and the town of Usk. Tribal workers reported no problems from the flooding.
Pend Oreille County Public Utility District spokesman Mark Cauchy said a district employee appears to have had one of the worst problems. He said the employee was still pumping water out of the unfinished basement Monday at his house near Dalkena, between Usk and Newport.
Cauchy said the river began to drop at 10 p.m. Sunday, and was six inches below the peak by Monday afternoon - still 2-1/2 feet above flood stage at Cusick. He said flows at the utility district’s Box Canyon Dam, downstream between Ione and Metaline, had dropped from 101,000 cubic feet per second to 95,000 cfs.
Upstream at the Albeni Falls Dam near Oldtown, Idaho, flows were down to 88,000 cfs from Wednesday’s peak of 98,600 cfs.
Albeni Falls project manager Bob Schloss said the worst probably is over, barring a sudden thaw in the Montana snowpack. Flows farther upstream appeared to be slowing, he said.
The most remarkable thing about this year’s flooding was that more houses have been built close to the river since the last time it flooded, Schloss said. Records show Lake Pend Oreille dumped more water into the river in 1972, 1974, 1981 and 1982.
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