WA floodwaters swept away their entire house: ‘That’s my life savings’

DEMING, Wash. – Sometime early Thursday, a tree crashed down right next to the home of Sarah Hansen and Mike Khazak, behind the couple’s bedroom window.

Hansen grabbed a packed bag and raced outside with their two dogs, Ollie and Rudy. Khazak was watching the river and could see floodwaters had pierced the rock walls protecting their home, which sat on the Nooksack River. Hansen was shocked.

“It was very fast,” said Hansen, 52. “It was not expected at all.”

An hour or so later, the river ripped away the house’s sunroom, an addition that Khazak had built recently. And by 8 a.m. Thursday, Hansen said, the main house and its foundation just broke free” and washed down the raging river, leaving behind only a garage overhanging the riverbank.

A video taken by Hansen shows the brown two-story A-frame house being carried away by the current.

“That place was my life savings,” Khazak said.

Khazak, who has owned the property since 2000, said he has weathered many seasonal floods while living in Deming, an unincorporated town of a few hundred people in Whatcom County. But the historic flooding that swept across Western Washington this past week brought the Nooksack to record heights. It was unlike anything Khazak had seen before.

“That place was everything,” said Khazak, 54. He added: “I’ve been self-employed, had a couple small businesses. Everything I’ve ever done went into that for the past 25 years. That’s the worst-case scenario.”

As rivers across Western Washington receded this weekend, residents began to recover and get a sense of the scope of the damage. For Khazak and Hansen, the flood destroyed their home, ravaged their garage and reached the small barn where their six pet goats lived.

Before the flood

Like any flood season, Khazak built rock walls to protect his property from the river. He regularly checked the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website to monitor flooding risk.

Floods have taken out chunks of his property over the years, he said. When he bought the property over 20 years ago, he said it measured about 5 acres. But floodwaters have swept away much of it in the years since, he said, leaving behind only 2.5 acres of land.

As the flood forecast worsened, Khazak stood out in the rain, patrolling the riverbank with a flashlight, anxiously watching the river get closer.

When the deck collapsed, he shouted: “Sarah, get the hell out of the house!”

The house became unstable over the next few hours, teetering over the Nooksack River.

Khazak reached out to friends and neighbors to ask for help. A few texts and some quick cellphone photographs of the situation said all they needed to know, he said. But the flooding blocked a key bridge, stalling help.

Aftermath

They lost some treasured items.

Khazak’s younger sister, Michele, died in October, and he had stored some of her artwork, musical instruments and personal items. Khazak said he had recently finished clearing out her condo.

“We were really close,” Khazak said, “I felt that I was able to salvage her stuff – shoes and artwork and all that – and I brought it to my place, but it ended up in the … river.”

After the river swept the house away, friends and neighbors finally arrived. The group retrieved as much as possible from the garage: garden tools, a generator, irreplaceable glass art made by Khazak’s glassblower friends, including wineglasses, paperweights and spheres with flowers inside. They also evacuated the couple’s pet goats. Meanwhile, the river’s level began to fall.

“We thought we were going to be fine,” Hansen said.

But the water kept coming, eroding the land in front of the couple’s garage.

“I was mostly just sitting in shock, and I did a lot of crying,” Hansen said. “Just feeling really sick. Just sick about it.”

On Sunday, the couple visited the property with some contractors to see what they could salvage. Now, even the goat barn has washed away.

Hansen and Khazak are staying in a hotel in Bellingham with their two dogs. The Whatcom Humane Society, where Hansen works as a veterinarian assistant, is watching their goats. The pair doesn’t believe they can build another home on that same property.

I can’t start a new life there,” Khazak said.

And they’re worried about the second atmospheric river forecast this week.

“My concern is that the river is going to take a lot more of the land,” she said. “It’s hard to say how much of his property is even left at this point.”

Emily Treadaway, a family friend, started a GoFundMe for the couple that had raised about $70,000 as of Sunday evening. Treadaway said she and her mother are receiving many messages from people who want to donate clothes, blankets and food. One person offered the couple a free three-month stay in a Bellingham rental home, she said.

“I can’t tell you how many people that I don’t even know have offered to buy me a pair of socks and a toothbrush in the past 24 hours,” Khazak said. He added: “I appreciate every single toothbrush.”