The unbelievable snow and rainfall that caused the unbelievable December1964 flood.
I need to start with thanks to Robin Shelley, Kym Kemp, and Olmanriver, who provided all of the photos and research for this story. I provided my own memory, and bits of Bullshistory to be verified or proven wrong.
Many, many times I have expressed how hard it rained in December of 1964. Many, many times I have witnessed people not believe what I had to say. Many, many times I’ve heard people propose their own theories of the flood, and why it was a disaster of major proportions. Usually their theories fall back on the fact that the loggers had stripped the hills bare and there was nothing to hold the water back. Somehow people just cannot wrap their minds around how much it snowed and rained in December of 1964.
Read, and pay particular attention to eyewitness reports. Robin Shelley lived in Laytonville at the time of the ‘64 flood. She said that the valley floor had at least a foot of snow. The hills surrounding Laytonville, and indeed all the hills of the north coast had a deep, deep snow pack. Then the heavy, warm tropical rains started. It rained like a thunder shower for days, then it started raining harder, and then again harder. It was the hardest that anyone living here then or since has ever seen it rain. It still gives me chills to think about that rain, 45 years later.
The rain was intense. It had rained over 36” in that December. From the 18th to the 23rd (5 Days!)it rained 27 ½ inches. Those are documented facts. Now for the bullshistory part, and I believe it to be true because I saw how hard it rained. “In the last 4 hours of the heavy rain, it rained 7 inches, and in one of those last hours it rained 4 inches.”
Robin Shelley Said:
“What I remember about Dec. 1964 was that it snowed and; froze, then snowed some more until the snow was probably a foot or more deep on the Long Valley floor & then it rained. And rained & rained & rained in what seemed like Biblical proportions. People began to wonder if it would ever stop. I'm not sure who to "blame" for that.”
From Bob Doran. I'm not sure who made the quote:
”You still see markers along the Avenue of the Giants showing how high the water rose. It's hard to imagine the power of the river that filled the entire valley, but that's what it did, washing away towns like Weott, Myer's Flat, Pepperwood and Shively in the process."
There used to be quite a Village along the river at Phillipsville also.
Kym Kemp said:
”My opinion on the '64 flood (which I am old enough to remember but not old enough to remember much beforehand) is that the rain was astoundingly intense. There was snow first and then warm rain on top of it but some of the logging practices exacerbated the problems. We would have still had a terrible flood without the logging though.”
It sounds like Kym must have sipped on the newcomer cool aide with that logging thing, but she remembers the rain enough to know that we would have had a terrible flood.
From Olmanrivers research:
"... in other words, the biggest mistake we made is when we went in (post '64)and cleared all the creeks. Thinking that we were enhancing the habitat, we ruined them, destroyed them. The fish need those waterfalls and those pockets. You don’t need to go there and make a freeway out of it. The water turns warm.
G: Following the flood we spent millions of dollars cleaning out all those tributaries, and they
just went in and destroyed them.
"With regards to timber harvesting he believes the Forest Service made some serious mistakes in
the past - bad practices such as clear cutting in known slide areas should not have been allowed.
He believes logging should not have been allowed in main drainages, and that there are other
values besides timber which need to be considered - wildlife and aesthetic values in particular.
“There is a right place and a wrong place to log - I always felt they came too close to the river in
the watershed.” He spoke about the fact that the Forest Service was not given a choice in these
matters; orders to harvest were mandated from Washington, and Forest Service employees who
objected were told to do their job or someone else would be found to replace them who would do
the job."
When I say that I witnessed whole virgin forests slip right into the rivers, or at least I saw were they had. People for some reason find it unbelievable. If you will bear with me while I give you a few thoughts, maybe, Just maybe, you will agree that the logging had little effect on the drama of the flood. If whole hillsides of virgin forests slipped into the river, doesn’t it make sense that all of the full size trees would do more to plug and stop the river with the resulting log jambs? There were numerous hillside of virgin, unmanaged forest, south of Leggett slip into the river. Where the South Fork of the Eel River leaves the 101 highway and heads south to Branscomb, all the land is wilderness area. Unlogged and unmanaged. There were many slides of timber into the river. You would not believe how many slides there were between Briceland and Redway.
All of the hillsides and forests had rivulets of water crashing down through the trees and brush. The fields had great sheets of water sliding off of them. The rain splashed on everything. Those of us out in the storm found it impossible to stay dry, even with raincoats on. The rain was warm, and being wet only caused a mild chill. We were able to continue with the evacuations of the low lying areas. I helped evacuate lower Redway and redwood grove down there. We had to quit when the water got over our axles. We all decided that we needed to get to where we wanted to be when the flood hit, because we knew that it was going to be a flood of major proportions. I lived in Garberville at the time and I went to my folks house on Oak Street in Garberville. My cousin and I went to Benbow and watched the trees in the park across the lake tumble into the river one after one. We were not prepared for the great crack of thunder that a five foot through redwood makes when it hit’s the water flatly. I sounded like a cannon shot, aimed at you. We went down to the river below Garberville and watched the water rising we tried to drive out toward Kimtu but the water was across the road just past the airport bridge. (It was called the Moody bridge then. After the town of Moody that it used to lead to) By then it was late, and we went home. The power was out and we had coal-oil lamps to eat dinner by.
The next morning, when we got up and went outside, the rain had let up a little. All you could hear was the roar of the river. Most of the town people were lined up along the top of the hill, overlooking the river. As high as the river was, it was a consensus among us that it was amazing the the river wasn't higher, having witnessed how hard it had rained. I can still remember the roar of the river, the loud popping, and crunching sounds that all of the debris was making. Most of the surface of the river was covered with driftwood, barrels, sheds, propane tanks, and just about anything that would float. We found out later that even the stuff that wouldn't float was washed down the river. P.G.&E lost a major electrical transformer that washed down the river. They placed a reward on it for whoever found it. It was never found. The most poinient thing about the flood that I remember, was the smell of crushed evergreen trees that it so reminicent of Christmas. It was heartbreaking.
We got along pretty well in the first few days after the flood then “Help” came. The “Civil Defence” set up an office, and took over emergency operations. After that everything was an emergency. The C.D. Headquarters was a good idea, and we needed some guidance. But, as with anything, give somebody some authority and they will make sure that they use it. They stopped all vehicle travel without a C.D. permit. They started to commandeer all of the four-wheel-drive vehicles, bulldozers, loaders, graders and road equipment. Back then, all of the ranchers and loggers had guns in their trucks, and they were already stressed from trying to save their ranch roads and livestock. They didn't take kindly to being told what they could or couldn't do by the Civil Defence.
One story that I will always remember, is the one where my boss and his neighbor, a log truck driver, took their shovels and chainsaws, and they opened a road from Phillipsville to the Dyerville-Loop road. They had a four wheel drive open Jeep, so they could go most places with it. The jeep had good traction and the windshield could fold down to go under things. They came into town to tell people that there was a road open between Garberville and Phillipsville, for any medical or food necessities. My boss checked with me and told me to find something to do until we could get the refrigeration shop back open. It didn't look like we would have much work until the power was restored. Then they headed back home, just as they were about to leave town the Civil Defence people told them that they were not going anywhere, and and that they were sorry, but they were going to have to take the Jeep for the rescue effort. My bosses friend reached between the front seats, pulled out a 30-30 rifle, cocked it, set the stock on his hip with the barrel in the air, and said. “You'd better move, we're going home”. That was one of the shortest conversations in the history of the flood.
My cousin Jim Newland and I signed up to work with the California Division of Highways. I signed up as and equipment operator. While I was waiting to be assigned a piece of equipment, they had Jim and I hand digging out a culvert. Our goal was to get it flowing again. It didn't take long for us to figure out that if we got it open, we were inside, and our reward would be getting washed into the river. We decided that we weren't quite used to working for stupid people, and we quit. By then, the Red Cross had asked us to start repairing or replacing appliances. They paid us a flat rate to fix things. Refrigerators were easy to fix. They came apart easy, and we reinsulated them, changed the thermostat, and the compressor start controls. Washers weren't so easy, we fixed them anyway, but they didn't last much longer than a year. It got the people that they were repaired for through the flood, and when the roads were open again they got new ones.
I don't know why I care, because I know that a lot of the logging was careless and sloppy. But, it really bothers me when the extent of the flood was blamed on logging. It doesn't bother me so much that the logging was condemned. But it really bothers me to not be able to explain how hard it rained, and that I know in my heart, that with that amount of rain, no time in history would the flood have been any better or any worse.
Click on the articles and photos for great enlargements.
The photos and clipping are from Robin Shelley, The Pepperwood newspaper is from Ross Sherburn.
This is and interesting link to the '64 Trinity Flood From Olmanriver.
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