After the Flooding

Under sunny skies punctuated by a stiff wind, representatives from a network of community organizations gathered Sunday to help residents impacted by the New Year’s flooding in King Salmon.

Volunteers, many wearing bright orange vests, warmly greeted those walking up to the meeting spot on Buhne Avenue, learning about their situations, listening to their experiences and providing them with information on support services.

Along the seawall separating the town from the dunes that run to Humboldt Bay were bottles of bleach and other cleaning supplies. Nearby a crate of bright green apples and cartons of food sat by a line of water bottles and boxes of pizza for anyone needing a snack or something to take home to eat.

The latest in a series of outreach efforts to take place since the flooding, the Community Support Day organizers say these events and supports will continue as long as needed, including a focus this week on assessing what kind of appliance needs residents are facing and how to meet them.

While the waters have receded after a combination of heavy rain, storm surge and King Tides — which reached a record-setting peak of 10.37 feet on Jan. 3 — inundated the small hamlet over the course of three days, signs of the deluge that flooded some streets waist-high remain evident.

In the absence of a proclamation of a local disaster, Humboldt Community Organizations Active in Disaster is working with a diverse range of partners as a relief bridge for impacted residents, providing support with necessities in the short-term and helping them navigate different channels to access the resources they need to move forward.

Those include, among others, Pay It Forward Humboldt, the Red Cross, the Pine Hill/South Bay Family Resource Center, Humboldt Grange and the county of Humboldt-Cal Poly Humboldt project called Fields Landing and King Salmon Living with Water, or FLKS, along with county agencies.

“Recovery is not fast by any means,” says HCOAD Executive Director Nick Bown-Crawford, “and we want to recognize that and to keep people warm and fed.”

Walking down Crab Street after he and others, including Cal Poly Humboldt professor and FLKS faculty lead Laurie Richmond, took local state representatives on a tour of the damage, Bown-Crawford says the latest number on Sunday shows 39 of the community’s nearly 200 residences suffering “major damage.” Of those, so far, three homes have been deemed unsafe to live in. At least 25 others saw moderate flooding.

While still a fluid situation, he estimates the damage at “well over $500,000” based on his experience and the property assessments done so far, but notes, “that will likely increase.” (As the Journal was going to press Tuesday afternoon, an email from the county placed the estimate at around $750,000.)

A high percentage of those impacted, Bown-Crawford notes, were unable to get or afford flood insurance. Some are currently living without basic appliances like water heaters, refrigerators or washer and dryers.

“These are the people who we are driving the aid to right now,” Bown-Crawford says. “We want to continue to meet with people and to get out the word that we are here. We do have a network of folks who are here to step in.”

Facing the Flooding

Linda and James Carter, who have lived in King Salmon for more than 15 years, are among those displaced.

As one of the only houses in the neighborhood encircled with a short wall that provided protection in previous flooding, James Carter says he was confident the same would hold true as the King Tide arrived on Jan. 2. He was wrong.

Instead, he says in an interview with the Journal last week, his wife opened the curtains at high tide that day to see her car inundated with 3 to 4 inches of water. “It’s now the biggest paperweight I’ve ever owned,” James Carter says.

Not only did the water not stop with the wall, it swiftly overtook their previously stacked sandbags as he rushed to shut off the electricity. The Carters say they tried to move as many of their possessions off the floor as they could before the house filled with 2 feet of water.

Everything that was submerged underwater will have to be repaired or replaced. All the flooring, some of which was recently renovated, had to be removed. Their junction box, located beneath their house like most houses in King Salmon, will need to be repaired.

For the time being, the couple says they plan to stay in a friend’s house in Hydesville for the next three weeks, then stay with a friend in Santa Rosa.

After securing their homes, neighbors began to check in on one another and offer support.

The Carters offered the use of their washer and dryer to their neighbors across the street, Bill and Suzanne Bennett, who lost their own to the foot of water that entered their home.

While the couple says they don’t plan on replacing any structural features of the house, which was built with redwood beams, she lost decades’ worth of cross stitching patterns and almost 50 books in their home library were ruined.

“I think it’s worse in a lot of ways to lose the things that your heart likes,” Suzanne Bennett says. “It’s not all the mechanical stuff, which is really expensive.”

Sally Hewitt, a former county employee who lives next door to the Carters, says her house escaped most of the potential damage with the water stopping just about a foot away from breaching the inside, but her car was destroyed.

She estimates the replacement of her car and electrical wiring under the house at around $10,000.

Hewitt says she found it heartening to see the immediate help from neighbors and local organizations who stepped in soon after the flooding began, even when resources were spread thin.

“I really am proud of our community here because people really pitched in to help each other as best they could,” Hewitt said. “I mean, their own house was going under, too, but there was a lot of caring and people checking on each other and, ‘You doing all right?’ and stuff like that.”

The Carters echoed those thoughts, saying they were grateful to have the support of the county, their immediate community and the contractors who helped them plan for repairs.

Linda Carter says they considered themselves among the lucky ones. They have insurance and access to resources but wish the town’s senior residents and those on fixed incomes were offered more support. Despite the risk of flooding, they appreciate being able to live in a bonded community in a home only 270 steps away from the beach. (Yes, they counted.)

“My whole thing I say now is that there’s 365 days out of a year. There’s 15 crappy ones in King Salmon, there’s 350 great ones,” Linda Carter says. “So, I mean, it is what it is. There’s nothing we can do about it and we’re just going to have to deal with it.”

Looking at the Long-term

For the last year and half, Richmond, along with student researchers and community liaisons on the FLKS project, have been connecting with residents of these low-lying bayside neighborhoods through surveys, workshops and, now, helping to provide aid.

Part of the project’s goal, according to its website, is to “identify near-term, feasible strategies to reduce current flood risk while also identifying longer term planning objectives and adaptation strategies to address future” sea-level rise.

And an important piece of that puzzle is listening to the experiences of those who have lived and continue to live there, with the project site noting, they have “a vested outcome in planning for the future of their communities.”

Among the findings from community input is that while there has been a general increase in high tides in Humboldt Bay, extreme flooding events can be hard to predict, with residents unable to pinpoint a discernable pattern in weather or tide levels before a flood.

Even long-term residents they spoke to had never seen the level of flooding that arrived with the New Year, according to Richmond.

“Everything that could go wrong, did,” Richmond says. “It was like a high lunar tide met with storm surge events, and there was rain. It was just all the things that could go wrong did to make it a really high tide. So, for a lot of residents, this is the first time they’ve had water in their home.”

With a median age of 68, more than half of King Salmon’s residents have an annual income of less than $50,000 and around 40 percent of households include a member with a disability, according to the project’s surveys, making the area especially vulnerable to financial hardship from floods.

But the surveys — like the sentiments expressed by residents interviewed by the Journal — also paint the picture of a tight-knit community, with those living in King Salmon having a close relationship to not only their unique surroundings but to each other.

Through her community outreach work, Richmond says she has witnessed first-hand that closeness and their commitment to supporting one another.

“It’s been an absolute pleasure to spend a year and a half on our team getting to know these communities and laugh with them,” Richmond says. “They’re amazing folks that love the coast and love living on the coast and want to protect the coast.”

What’s Next

With recovery for many in the community a long journey that’s just getting started, the support from the groups and volunteers who stood along the seawall on Sunday are going to be continuing as well, according to Bown-Crawford.

That means everything from connecting residents to insurance advocacy groups to help them navigate the red tape of next steps and providing housing assistance to the displaced to trying to dig into federal flood assistance programs and helping those who call King Salmon home regain their quality of life.

While neither the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors nor the county Office of Emergency Services proclaimed a local disaster, representatives of the state Office of Emergency Services were scheduled to come look at the situation, Bown-Crawford says.

In an email statement to the Journal, Sheriff William Honsal says such declarations are “intended for situations where impacts exceed the routine capabilities and resources of the county,” and the situation in King Salmon did not “warrant such a declaration from an OES perspective.”

“This high tide and storm affected several homes, and there were no significant impacts to roads, utilities, public facilities, or critical services,” Honsal wrote. “OES was in contact with Public Works, Building and Planning, DHHS and the Red Cross, and the situation was handled through normal government processes. No government agency requested additional support from OES or mutual aid.”

He also noted that a local emergency was not declared “during the recent flooding in Bayside, Freshwater, and Jacoby Creek.”

“In this case, we are maintaining situational awareness, facilitating communication with government agencies, and assisting with coordination as needed, while allowing the departments with primary responsibility to carry out duties and responsibilities in King Salmon,” the statement says.

A local emergency was declared by the city of Arcata and the county after the Jan. 2 fire that burned down a city block, destroying seven businesses and eight apartments, with both referring to how assessing, containing and mitigating potential contaminated runoff from the suppression effort and ensuing storms were beyond the capabilities of city and county resources.

As with the recovery efforts in Rio Dell after the earthquakes in late 2022 and early 2023, one of the painful realities is how these types of disasters will not qualify for Federal Emergency Management Agency funding, one of the only forms of government aid that provides direct cash assistance, because of the high monetary damage threshold needed to be met.

“What we really do rely on in these situations is that community effort to wrap their arms around these types of communities,” Bown-Crawford says during an interview earlier in the week. “A lot of resources exist within our local government, local business and communities, and it’s just a matter of being able to coordinate and activate all of these folks. And we do heavily rely on philanthropy and private donations to make this type of work happen in a fast manner.”

While the focus is now on recovery in King Salmon, HCOAD and its partners will also be there for the next Humboldt community that needs their support, building on partnerships formed in the aftermath in Rio Dell and strengthened with each new response.

“This is what collaboration looks like,” Bown-Crawford says. “We can do community-led recovery. … It’s just going to take wide community involvement and philanthropy. … We learn so much from every disaster. And not just how to respond better but how to recover better.”

Griffin Mancuso (he/him) is a freelance journalist based in Eureka. He is passionate about uplifting the stories of local communities and wildlife education and preservation. More of his work can be found at griffinmancuso.wordpress.com.

Kimberly Wear is the Journal’s assistant editor. Reach her at (707) 442-1400, extension 106, or kim@northcoastjournal.com.