A River Runs Through It Cowlitz Valley Couple Torn Between Devotion To Home, Fear Of Yet Another Devastating Flood

As Connie and Orval Sneed rehung their front door after rebuilding from the November 1995 floods, Connie quipped to her husband, “You’d better caulk it real good,” as they watched new floodwaters creep closer.

The caulking didn’t help. The waters of the February 1996 flood came up to her eyeballs, rising over the wainscoting, inundating the electrical switches and sending furniture and appliances bobbing like apples in their living space.

The house is on the old donation land claim of Nathaniel Ostrander, who arrived in 1852 and who was the Cowlitz Valley’s first doctor. County records indicate the house was built in 1910, but the Sneeds believe it is at least a decade older and was owned by Ostrander’s granddaughter, Mary Catlin.

After two floods, the Sneeds should be good candidates for Cowlitz County’s offer to sell out and move to safer ground.

But they can’t make up their minds. They are torn between devotion to the house they’ve resurrected and their fears that floods will swamp them again.

“We’re both schizophrenics. One day we’re looking at new houses, and the next day we’re deciding what we’re going to do to fix this house up,” Connie Sneed said.

A decision could come within a month, when the county receives appraisals on the Sneed home and some 20 other properties in the Ostrander and West Stock Road areas north of Kelso.

Last month, the Federal Emergency Management Agency approved a $1.2 million project to buy out flood-prone land and homes in those areas. Under the project, landowners will get 87.5 cents on the dollar.

“I don’t have to take their offer,” Connie said. “But what if it floods again? If I were someone else, then I’d say: ‘The fools. They should have taken the money.”’

The Sneeds bought the abandoned two-story farmhouse in 1987 for $32,000. Surrounded by junk cars and blackberries, its windows broken out, the house leaning over, family members told them they were crazy.

But Connie had always wanted an old farmhouse, and the rural setting, old woodwork and historical mystique - it was said to be haunted - made the place a perfect fit.

“I was looking my whole life for this house,” she said.

The Sneeds transformed the dilapidated structure into a quaint, storybook home landscaped with flowers and trees and ringed by a picket fence.

“We do not go on vacations,” Connie said. “This place is our life. It is our vacation spot. We picnic on the creek. My mom lived in the same house (in the city) 40 years. She begged us to live out here. Her happiest years were spent out here.”

Eight years of hard work began washing away in the flood of November 1995, which brought 8 inches of water into the dwelling. The Sneeds learned too late that their flood insurance had lapsed during a change of insurance companies. With a $5,000 FEMA grant, their own money and labor, the Sneeds made repairs, only to have the February flood wash in far more extensive damage. They finally had to refinance the home in December even though they received another $5,000 FEMA grant. Interior walls were again torn down. Wiring was again yanked out. More sodden wall-to-wall carpet ripped up.

“I’m so broke, we live paycheck to paycheck,” said Connie, 38, who works at the state Department of Corrections Work Release Center. Orval, 52, is a superintendent for Safe Inc., a Kelso metal fabricating firm.

Since learning that their property might be bought out, the Sneeds haven’t known whether to continue repairs. “I’ve been in limbo,” Connie said.