At 4:10 a.m. on Friday, flood waters were close enough to the Chehalis Avenue Apartments on Southwest Third Street that a concerned citizen called the Chehalis Police Department, unsure if any of the apartments threatened by the encroaching water were occupied.
An hour and 20 minutes later, at 5:30 a.m. on Friday, Twin Transit Executive Director Joe Clark got a call from Lewis County Central Dispatch: The Chehalis Avenue Apartments were indeed flooding and a family of three needed to be evacuated.
“We’d given them (central dispatch) our numbers … in advance of that because we were prepared to bring people in if necessary,” Clark said.
The family had been safely evacuated, along with their pets and some belongings, by 6:30 a.m. Throughout the morning on Friday, Twin Transit successfully evacuated 12 to 13 people from the Chehalis Avenue Apartments and transported them to the Red Cross emergency shelter at Centralia Middle School.
Looking at photos of flood water flowing freely in the area surrounding the Chehalis Avenue Apartments on Friday, City Manager Jill Anderson said, “I’d never seen so much water here before. I know some of you have seen even more, but it was quite sobering to see so much water and to see the cars with water up to the passenger windows.”
While that Friday morning evacuation of the Chehalis Avenue Apartments ended up being the only one Twin Transit was needed for during last week’s flooding, Twin Transit was prepared to do a lot more.
Twin Transit had six transit buses and eight school buses staged at Chehalis Middle School and St. Mary’s Catholic Church so they could evacuate residents on either side of the Skookumchuck River and serve as temporary shelters for EMTs to treat evacuees with injuries.
“That would be adequate but we didn't have to use either, because as you know, the waters didn't rise as high as we originally (predicted),” said Clark, later adding: “It was a great exercise. It helped us coordinate with Lewis County Central Dispatch, the Department of Emergency Management, both school districts, transit, and I think it helped them realize that you can, in these situations, use a bus — doesn’t matter if it's a transit bus or a school bus — both for transportation and for immediate shelter.”
Lewis County area rivers crested late in the week. While the Newaukum set a record, the Skookumchuck River crested far below initial predictions of a flood more than 2 feet higher than the record 1996 flood.
“The city sustained some significant damage. It could have been so much worse though. I think we can all appreciate how bad it was but how much worse it could have been,” said Anderson.
Lewis County is working to assess how much damage residents and businesses sustained during last week’s flooding, and the Chehalis City Council voted Monday to declare a two-month state of emergency to aid Lewis County’s efforts in securing public assistance from FEMA.
