6 • November 14, 2012 • Snoqualmie Valley Record
Ruptured beaver dam leaves Valley family with a fine mess
Stream busts its banks on Nov. 5 near Carnation, Duvall By Carol Ladwig Staff Reporter
A steady stream of neighbors and spectators flowed past Bob and Suzanne Siko’s swamped house Tuesday morning, Nov. 6, offering to run errands, bring coffee, or help in other ways, and all of the traffic, down and up the Northeast 124th Street hill south of Duvall, had to cut through standing water to get there. They also warily skirted the energetic little stream that was once again flowing near the Siko home, instead of into it. “The stream would still be going right past my front door right now if we hadn’t had all these people come out… we literally put the stream back in its banks last night,” said Bob Siko on Tuesday morning. Around 11:30 Monday morning, neighbors alerted both Bob, a commercial construction contractor, and Suzanne, a teacher at Hillside Academy in Duvall, that their historic home had been overrun by a flood, reportedly caused by a ruptured beaver dam at a nearby pond. All of the family was away when the flood
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hit, the parents at work and “Our house sandbagged their four boys at school. itself,” said Suzanne, so the “I had a phone call from damage inside was minimal. a friend of mine, who actu- The living room, a bathally saw the wall of water room and one bedroom had coming down,” Bob said water inside, and will need Tuesday. new sheetrock, but much of The wall was estimated the floor in the old house is at four or five feet high as it uneven, so water naturally crashed down the hillside, flowed into the crawlspace inundating the Siko home instead of across the floor. on the south side of 124th, So did the silt, though. “I the barn that is home to think it’s packed underneath their Christmas tree busi- our house,” said Suzanne, ness on the north side of “so I don’t know how we 124th, and, briefly, S.R. 203 handle that.” before spreading out along The family is staying with the Valley floor. The high- friends nearby during the way was not closed, but cleanup, and Suzanne was 124th across the valley and skeptical that they’d be able part-way up to get back the hill was, into their from about home soon, noon to 2 p.m. because of Monday. the type of “Thank God water that nobody was in got into my yard,” said the living Bob Siko, space. Bob Bob. “I could Flooded home-owner was more have lost my family.” concerned The house about the might have gone, every- damage and debris in the one helping to clean up on yard than he was about the Tuesday morning agreed, if sturdy house. the water hadn’t pushed a “I have a picture of the huge pile of debris up to house in 1904, with my shelter the house and shed wife’s grandfather on the from the main impact. A front porch, standing about 50-foot- long logjam, stand- this high,” he said, holding ing about seven feet high, his hand at about threehad formed on the hill and-a-half feet high. above the house, and the The dirt and silt is piled silt in the water also seemed higher than that now, both to help. in the yard, and across the road in the Christmas tree lot. Bob said the family had already ordered the trees for
“We literally put the stream back in its banks last night.”
GOOD NEWS!
Carol Ladwig/Staff photos
Above: It was an election day Suzanne Siko may never forget, following the flood that damaged her home Nov. 6, but it didn’t deter her from sending in her ballot. Below: A 50-foot mass of logs, rocks and silt came down the hill with 20-plus acre-feet of water when a beaver dam failed, but the logjam protected the house. the season, so now he just hoped they could get the area cleaned up in time. Many friends and neighbors had arrived Monday afternoon and worked till dark to start the cleanup, and by 9 a.m. Tuesday morning, there were another 20 or so steadily at work scraping silt out of the yard and dumping it into waiting dumptrucks. King County staff arrived soon after to assess the stream and clean it out, too. Suzanne, who’d taken the day off work to document the damages, and grateful for all the help her family was receiving, said, “This is really a community story.”
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