PENDLETON — Cheryl Baker can still see the river from her house.

A year ago, a rapidly melting snowpack combined with heavy rains in the Blue Mountains created a surge of water that overwhelmed the banks of the Umatilla River. Across the county, the rising waters penetrated levees, tore through homes, shut down factories and took a life.

The water was already chest high when she and her family evacuated Riverview Mobile Home Estates, an eastern Pendleton trailer park just north of the Umatilla.

By the time Baker returned on Feb. 8, 2020, the damage to her home was rendered in sludge.

“Everything was covered in mud,” she said.

Many of Baker’s former neighbors at Riverview have left, a fact marked not by empty homes but by empty space. Baker said new owners bought the park after the flood and removed many of the damaged trailers. She estimates that about half of the park’s trailers were cleared out.

Despite everything that’s happened, Baker decided to stay.

She and her partner Gerald Meisner stayed at a motel for two months while they began rebuilding their lives. With help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Baker replaced walls, flooring, a refrigerator, dishwasher and more. Altogether, she estimates the cost of repairing her home at $20,000.

By the time the flood hit, Baker had lived at Riverview for nearly two decades. She and her home had withstood previous high water events and, when the waters began rising in February 2020, she initially thought she could keep the water at bay once more.

“We had it beat until we didn’t,” she said.

She may watch snowpack levels more closely, but her plan is to stay. She even managed to pepper in laughter as she recounted the past 12 months.

“When you get done crying, you have to find a reason to laugh,” she said, before admitting that she hadn’t cried much either.

Echo farmers, crops still recovering a year later

When the East Oregonian arrived in Echo on the morning of Feb. 7, 2020, Lloyd Piercy leaned out of his pickup truck to chat with Tona Clements, who was watching the water recede from her home just outside of town. He was on his way to check on his daughter’s home, which was on the other side of a layer of water covering the road ahead.

Piercy had plenty to worry about that day. The local fire district had warned area residents that high water was coming, and he and others on his farm had moved as much equipment as they could. But the damage was still piling up.

“I had a haystack that was in the way, and it floated away,” he said as he recounted the damage almost a year later.

Altogether, he said, about 200 acres of his farm ended up suffering serious damage, although he was lucky that the water didn’t end up in his home.

“I had acres that washed away and no longer exist,” he said.

His blueberries got hit hardest. Trellises and bushes were swept away or buried in gravel and other debris that Piercy and his employees spent about two months removing. He also had to replace his irrigation system, pump house and insulation under a building he owns.

His blueberries have recovered “fairly nicely,” he said on Feb. 3, 2021. When a reporter called to talk, the beep of heavy equipment could be heard in the background as he worked along the river, trying to shore up protection for his property just upstream from downtown Echo. The Bureau of Reclamation built infrastructure along the river decades ago that he says pushed the flood waters onto his property. He thinks the bureau should be paying for the levee repairs, he said, but after months of arguing with government agencies involved in the Umatilla River, he hasn’t gotten anywhere on that front.

“It’s 100% my bill,” he said.

A year after floods damaged their home, a family rebuilds

There are two things that Nate Fuller remembers most from the seven hours that he was trapped on the roof of a house in Thorn Hollow, watching the waters rise around him.

One is the memory of his daughter’s toy Jeep bobbing away in the floodwaters below, along with his tools, his lawnmower, and a summer’s worth of chopped wood he had intended to use for fires and home improvements.

“I’ve heard people say, ‘My whole life flashed before my eyes,’ but every material thing I had outside was going” away, Fuller said.

The other is the memory of his final words to his wife, Chantel, before he hopped in a boat to head out and attempt to rescue an elderly couple waving frantically from inside their home as the water in their yard rose too high to escape.

“Especially when I got on that roof, I said, ‘I’m glad I said I love you and everything is going to be OK,’” Fuller said, recalling the house’s framework underfoot, which seemed unstable in the torrent.

Fuller, Chantel and her father, Bill Koskela, had returned to Thorn Hollow, near Athena, to begin evacuating their home during the unprecedented flooding of the Umatilla River in February 2020. They hoped to save some clothes and the dogs, but upon arrival, they found the stranded neighbors and a man named Archie Morrow planning a rescue attempt.

Morrow and Fuller climbed into a boat and made their way out to the couple’s home, perhaps 100 yards away. But the boat got stuck as the water rose higher and higher. So, the two climbed on the roof, where they remained until they were finally rescued by a National Guard Helicopter hours later, as roads to the area became impassable even for local first responders.

When Fuller returned to his home to observe the wreckage days later, he found his screen door ajar. Nothing inside seemed to be missing. He looked toward where his goats and chickens were kept — before the floodwaters washed them all away — and saw tire tracks where he was sure he had not driven.

Two sheds had been broken into. Among the items stolen were tools, chain saws, paints, camping gear, fishing poles and more.

How does one recover?

In the coming weeks, Nate and Chantel, along with their kids, TownesLee, 8, TilLee, 5, and NoLee, 3, stayed with family in nearby Athena. The couple worked tirelessly to repair their home, removing floors and sheetrock soaked with water and various debris. Perhaps 20 friends, co-workers and volunteers came out to help, several of whom read about the Fullers’ plight in the news.

At one point, they used three tractors to repair a 4-foot ditch in the driveway carved away by the waters.

“I have all these pictures of me and my wife walking around, and I’m like, ‘Climb in that hole’ and get a reference point,” Fuller said of the damage, which could be seen across most of his property. “No one’s going to believe this unless I take these pictures.”

Among all the damage, however, the grass in his yard simply looked like it had been smoothed over with a comb.

His children — who were at school when their home flooded — were confused and distraught, wondering why they couldn’t go home, Fuller said. He and Chantel didn’t want the kids to see the wreckage. They worried the sight would be too overwhelming.

Fuller explained to TownesLee time and again that the house was unsafe for now, but assured her they would be home soon.

And for TilLee, who suffered a traumatic brain injury after a fall in 2016, which caused sensory issues, “every day, she asked the question repeatedly, ‘Why are we not going home, why are we not going home,’” Fuller said, recalling the difficult moment when he explained to the kids that the chickens and goats were swept away.

Fuller’s work continued on until the family finally returned home over two months later, on April 26, 2020.

“For a moment there, I felt like they kind of forgot about everything that had happened,” Fuller said. “It came back to them, though, when they came outside they had to see that a lot of stuff was gone, wiped away.”

The family received federal disaster relief funds and support from the Red Cross in the form of around $10,000, Fuller said. It was enough to bring things somewhat back to normal, but even today, debris from the flood remains lodged beneath his front porch.

Then the pandemic hit. Life became a balancing act for the Fullers, with ongoing repairs, separate work schedules and kids doing online school. Fortunately for the couple, they were able to continue working, he at Homestead Youth and Family Services and she as a manager for GK Cleaning & Janitorial, which often requires her to go to work around 2 a.m.

After two consecutive years of high waters threatening their household, Fuller said he feels anxiety, wondering if he made the right choice and if the worst might happen again.

“Did I invest a bunch of money in a place I’m going to lose? Did I invest a bunch of time and a lot of people’s energy in a place I’m eventually going to lose? Do I want to continue to do that?” he said. “But it’s the only thing I’ve got. I never thought I’d be where I am right now, owning my own place, married, having kids. But I’m here. Maybe it’s not anxiety. Maybe everybody has that feeling of, ‘Am I making the right choice?’”

Through the seemingly endless days of work and recovery, Fuller said his family are his biggest supporters.

“I need to have a place for them to be safe,” Fuller said of his family. “I need to have a home for them.”

2: The number of days the Multi-Agency Recovery Coordination Center was open for to provide recovery assistance information to affected individuals.

399: The number of homes that were either destroyed or, due to some sort of major or minor damage, were deemed inaccessible as a result of the Umatilla River flood.

54: The number of people assisted by Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters supplied by the state of Oregon to assist with aerial rescue and reconnaissance of trapped residents and responders in the area of impact.

118: The number of families that registered for help with the American Red Cross.

250: The number of individuals supported in the Oregon Military Department’s emergency shelter, which was initially opened at the Umatilla Armory before transitioning to the Pendleton Convention Center through the remainder of the event.

400: The approximate number of employees that were impacted for three to seven months in Pendleton’s industrial area while repairs were made to the businesses to get them back into operation.

19,000: The peak flow on the Umatilla River at Pendleton on February 6 was estimated to be around 19,000 cubic feet per second (cfs), eclipsing the previous high flows of 13,300 cfs seen in February 1996 and 15,500 cfs seen in January 1965.

4,335,518: The estimated cost of assistance based upon the individual assistance PDA assessments.

26,651,582: The estimated costs for the disaster repairs, including debris removal, emergency protective measure, roads and bridges, water control facilities, public buildings, utilities and parks, based upon the public assistance PDA assessments.

Source: Oregon Office of Emergency Management