SNOHOMISH — Patrick Chonzena woke at 2 a.m. Thursday to check on the water approaching his 108-year-old farmhouse east of town.
The flood was coming.
By 4 a.m., it filled the field near their home. By 6 a.m., the water was coming up so fast he and his wife were hurriedly packing to evacuate their home at the end of 86th St SE east of the Pilchuck River.
“It was a lake,” said Karen Chonzena.
By the afternoon, their home and a lot of others in and around Snohomish were surrounded by flood waters bubbling up from rivers and over levees.
The flood water boiled over roads, buried farmland and left people gawking and talking at the river’s edge downtown. The Snohomish River ripped by, high, fast and dangerous.
As darkness fell over downtown people flocked to First Street. Every parking space was full, dozens walked the promenade along the river, taking pictures, taking it all in.
The water covered Kla Ha Ya Park and everything else below to the river. Just above the park, someone had put up a hand-lettered sign: “No diving.”
Terry and Craig Saunderson of Snohomish strolled downtown and watched the river drag entire trees past at speeds normally reserved for cars.
“I can’t believe it’s going to get any higher,” she said.
Restaurants and bars were doing brisk business. Todo Mexico, a restaurant and bar overlooking the river, had water climbing its foundation. The bottom two floors are empty, said bartender and manager Ruben Muniz. Inside every table was full.
“You see a lot of people are down here — more than usual,” he said.
The river was higher and faster than many people remember.
In the Chonzenas’ neighborhood, several dozen homes were cut off as water from the Pilchuck filled a flood plain on the east edge of town. Brown water chugged through the neighborhood, dislodging tires, bags of garbage and propane tanks and setting them down in fields.
The Chonzenas had to work Thursday. When the returned home in the evening, they wondered what state their home would be in. At around 7 p.m., they stood at the end of the bridge at Sixth Street, the only access to their neighborhood, and contemplated the Pilchuck roiling over the roadway.
After watching their neighbors slosh through the water successfully, they drove past the road closed sign, through half a mile of water rushing over the road to their house. There, they found a river coursing through their yard but, amazingly, their old farmhouse was just high enough they had no water inside. Neighbors dressed in duck hunting gear were loading themselves into a steel boat. Further down one street, the water was more than 4 feet deep. People were stranded.
At the southeast end of town on Lincoln Street, farmer Allen Stocker cared for his cattle and wondered just how he was going to get through this. More than 60 acres of his land were underwater. His cattle, all 51 head, crowded on a small chunk of dry land near the barn.
Once the water drops, he knows he’ll spend days — maybe months — clearing fields of debris, unplugging culverts and fixing fences. Family and friends converged on Stocker’s farm and tried to help move some of the equipment out of the way of coming waters.
After the sun dropped, they blew off some steam outside the barn, drinking cans of Coors around a burn barrel, country music blaring from a pickup truck. The river lapped at farm equipment not far away.
They tried to save a calf born sometime in the morning. The ground was so wet and mucky, she couldn’t nurse the nutrient rich milk from her mother. The calf lay wrapped in a blanket under hay in the barn, a giant bottle nearby. The calf’s mother bellowed outside the barn, and the cows stuck their heads under a metal slat and chomped on hay. Stocker isn’t hopeful she’ll make it.
And his farm?
“We’ll make it — just like every other time,” he said, smoking a cigarette and eyeing his gentle cattle. “I spend every buck on the farm. No vacations, no luxuries.”
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