Ferry County Goes With The Flow Towns Coping Despite Heavy Flooding

The weather was so warm and sunny here Tuesday that it seemed hard to believe Ferry County was paralyzed by flooding.

But it was hard to ignore the river flowing through the starting gate of the horse track at the county fairgrounds. The rodeo grounds were covered by O’Brien Creek, which ordinarily is a picturesque stream which passes under several little bridges at the fairgrounds.

Despite flood-caused devastation throughout northern Ferry County, the town of Curlew is going ahead with its annual Barrel Derby Days celebration this weekend. It remains to be seen what effect the swollen Kettle River will have on the contest to guess how long it takes a barrel to float into town from an upstream bridge.

Republic also is going ahead with its Prospector Days celebration June 12-14, but the traditional rodeo has been canceled because of the damage to the fairgrounds.

“We’ll have a mud-wrestling contest out there instead,” Ferry County Commissioner Jim Hall joked. If there is a silver lining to the disaster, Hall said, it is the way residents have set aside their disputes and are working together. The isolation caused by the loss of so many roads also has been a boon for local businesses.

“Business has increased a lot since people are staying local, which we appreciate even though we don’t wish the hardship on them,” said Joyce Longfellow, owner of the Curlew General Store.

Longfellow was almost as busy as a Costco clerk on a Saturday afternoon in Spokane. Until state Highway 21 from Republic is reopened later this week, Curlew is largely cut off from the rest of the county.

Sherman Pass and state Highway 21 south of Republic were the main victims of the flash flood that rolled off the mountains after a cloudburst dumped an estimated 4 inches of rain within a few hours on May 26 and 27. “Sherman Pass looks like it’s been carpet-bombed,” said Hall, who flew over the road with local and state officials.

Sheriff’s Detective J.R. Sharp was on the road, state Highway 20, when the “bombing” occurred. He was warning residents about six miles east of Republic to evacuate and almost got washed away himself.

Sharp was escorting a local family through 1 feet of water on the highway about 2 a.m. when a small tree fell on the family’s car, crushing the roof and breaking the windshield without injuring the occupants. After getting the family safely home, Sharp headed back to Republic.

“Then the road below me washed out,” he said. “There was probably 2-1/2 to 3 feet of water going over the guardrail. I actually started to drive through it, but it was just too swift and the logs and stumps were going over the guardrail.

“It was basically a river going down the road. It was awesome.”

Luckily, Sharp said, a state Department of Transportation dump truck with a snow plow came along. Sharp abandoned his patrol car on high ground and rode back with the state worker.

“He put the plow down and just plowed the logs off the road,” Sharp said.

The highway is now completely severed in that area - and numerous others - and what’s left of the road looks like a sandwich that’s been eaten from both sides. An Air Force squadron trying to destroy a military supply route might have done no more.

State and local workers faced a similarly harrowing experience about 6:30 p.m. on the day after the storm began. A state road crew was inspecting damage to Highway 21 about 8-1/2 miles south of Republic when a 35-foot-tall rock fell into the Sanpoil River.

The rock blocked the river and caused it to break through the highway. Workers were trying to cross the breach in a Jeep when the road sank beneath them. A Pend Oreille County Public Utility District crew that had just arrived to look for a broken power line came to the rescue.

“Our boys threw a rope on that Jeep and pulled ‘em out or they would have lost the whole shmear,” said utility district supervisor Allen Hobsen.

Both crews were back Tuesday to repair the damage.

By evening, it was raining again.