AUBURN, Wash. — One week after it started overtaking homes, water from the Green River finally began to recede on 78th Avenue South, giving a people the first look at their homes.
For Shelley Pasco, owner of Whistling Train Farm, signs of three feet of water were left on her walls.
“I can see the high water line on my door,” Pasco said after going inside for the first time in days. “The drywall is already peeling off and there’s just mud all over the floor.”
Next door at Briscots Farm, the work Don Kramer and his wife had put into to restoring the farm seems to have washed away.
“It’s horrible because we’ve been working for 10 years to save this place,” Kramer said.
Water finally receded from the road Friday, allowing them a look at places that took waiters or a boat to get to through the first part of the week. Still, Kramer estimates six feet of water on the west side of his property.
A week ago, the fields had begun to flood-- a normal part of heavy rains, Pasco said. That night though, Kramer reports a sudden change where water levels rose six inches, coming up to the steps of his front porch.
“It was scary, we didn’t think we were going to get everybody out,” Kramer said, speaking to his Clydesdale horses, several cows, a pig, a couple geese, a duck, pigeon, parrot and several chickens.
The chaos of wrangling those animals matched the chaos of the people who live in the block trying to get out. It’s a small sliver that sits just west and just south of the City of Kent’s borders along the Green River and just north of the City of Auburn’s border along 277th Avenue.
“There was no evacuation order, there were no emergency responders coming to check on us saying, ‘hey you guys better think about evacuating.’ We were really just on our own here.”
Pasco and Kramer are two of five people who live along the street to say they didn’t get an evacuation notice as feet of water overtook 78th Ave and the homes on each side.
“I don’t know if it’s just because there’s only six families on this road that we didn’t get a notice or what but we were seemingly forgotten about and ignored,” Kramer said.
KIRO 7 reached out to the King County Department of Emergency Management.
A spokesperson said a pump meant to help with water levels was overwhelmed by the record-volume of water flowing through the Green River.
The spokesperson points out there were two evacuation notices issued on Saturday. One at 3:51 p.m. That didn’t include 78th Avenue, and another at 11:52 p.m., did.
“My animals were already safe, I was in a very gracious person’s house,” Kramer said of the timing of the evacuation notice.
With this start to the wet season, Kramer says he hopes this isn’t a sign of what’s to come.
“The rest of the year, I’m nervous the whole year now. Honestly, I am nervous until we changed some stuff.”
Pasco and Kramer have created GoFundMe’s and Kramer says he wouldn’t mind a few hands to help him clean up. He asks people who can volunteer to reach out to him on his Facebook.