BRINNON — Flood waters began to recede Saturday as another slide blocked part of Duckabush Road near Brinnon after Friday floods pushed about a dozen people out of their homes.
The Duckabush River, fueled by at least 7 inches of rain in the Olympic Mountains, spilled its banks in the areas of Kelly Road, Shorewood Road and Duckabush Road on Friday, flooding an area that had been hard-hit by high water in December.
“It’s quieted down,” said Bob Hamlin, director of Jefferson County Emergency Management, on Saturday.
“It’s the rain in the upper basin that causes the problem,” he said. “That has significantly slackened.”
Gage height of the Duckabush near Brinnon reached 6.56 feet by 11:45 a.m. Friday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, and had fallen to 4.40 feet by late Saturday afternoon
Rescue teams — about 20 people, counting two volunteers — worked from early Friday morning to early that afternoon, going door to door and helping those who were trapped to leave flooding homes.
They visited at least 14 homes on the Kelly Road side of the river and nine on the other side of the river, said Patrick Nicholson, Brinnon fire chief.
Swift-water teams from Clallam County and state Fish and Wildlife rescued three people — an adult and two children — from a Ford pickup truck swept away by the river at 7:30 a.m. Friday, said Nicholson.
A family of five that was trapped in a home in the area of Kelly and Duckabush roads was rescued — and another five chose to leave their homes temporarily.
Two people were helped from their homes on Trailwood Drive on the other side of the river, he added.
None of the unidentified people was injured, he said.
The people who evacuated left with family or friends, Nicholson said.
Hamlin said he was not aware of anyone being homeless Saturday.
A mudslide at Shorewood and Kelly roads reported at about 3 a.m. Friday was the first sign of the effects of flooding, according to Nicholson.
“When we arrived, the water was rising very rapidly through the neighborhood,” he said.
“I saw the potential of how bad [the flooding] was going to get” and called out swift-water teams and fire department personnel.
The slide was cleared by 3 p.m. that day, Hamlin said.
Another, smaller slide was reported at about noon Saturday near the site of Friday’s slide, Hamlin said.
At midafternoon, the slide blocked one lane of the road some 100 yeards east of Friday’s larger one, according to Karen Sickle, who lives on Duckabush Road.
“Except for some unstable slopes, I think things are in pretty good shape,” Hamlin said.
Although the Department of Emergency Management had arranged with the American Red Cross Olympic Peninsula chapter to open the Brinnon Community Center as an emergency shelter, it was not needed, Nicholson said.
Janet Halvorson, a store clerk at Brinnon General Store, said at 1 p.m. Saturday that the flooding had noticeably receded.
“It’s definitely gone down and getting better today now that it’s slowing down on the raining,” she said.
Sickle agreed. “There are big puddles in people’s yards,” she said Saturday.
Krista Carlile, assistant manager at Pleasant Harbor Marina near Brinnon, said Dosewallips State Park, with 5,400 feet of freshwater shoreline on each side of the Dosewallips River, “was pretty much underwater” when she drove to work Saturday morning.
“The high tide didn’t help any this morning,” Carlile said.
High tide Saturday was at 6:52 a.m.
Rain is expected through Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service.
“Rainfall amounts will not be as much as we’ve seen recently,” said Ni Cushmeer, meteorologist with the Weather Service’s Seattle office.
“It will exacerbate any flooding we’re seeing now and increase the threat of landslides,” she added.
The area that was flooded Friday was the same that had been hit hard in a Dec. 9 storm, Nicholson said.
The Red Cross ran an emergency shelter for a day in Brinnon, and eight people were rescued from their homes while others fled on their own.
Brinnon Fire Station 42 on Shorewood Drive, which contained several pieces of equipment, was flooded badly then, suffering some $200,000 worth of damage.
The station flooded again Friday, although the damage was less because no equipment was stored there, Nicholson said.
In the Lazy C housing development, which was flooded in December, several homes were threatened Friday, but no one chose to leave, he said.
At least 7 inches of rain fell in the Olympic Mountains during a 24-hour period ending at 7 p.m. Friday, briefly driving other North Olympic Peninsula rivers such as the Dungeness, Elwha and Bogachiel to flood stage.
The hardest-hit lowland area on the Peninsula was Brinnon, which received 5.18 inches of rain between midnight and 7 p.m. Friday, Cushmeer said.
Over the same period of time, from midnight to 7 p.m., Port Townsend and Sequim received less than an inch of rain, while Port Angeles had slightly more than 1 inch and Forks nearly 2 inches.
The deluge is from an “atmospheric river of moisture” coming from the subtropics west and south of Hawaii, Cushmeer said.
Friday’s storm was the second in a line approaching the Pacific Northwest. The first, a weak system, hit Thursday. The next arrived Friday night, and another is expected to drop rain on the area tonight and Monday.
“It doesn’t look as wet as the recent one,” Cushmeer said, but with much of it falling in the Olympics, “the rivers will remain pretty high.”
