Reading the story “The city that submerged” in the Sept. 16 Columbian Life section brought back memories.
I was working then for Finzer Business Machines, located in a basement on the southeast corner of Southwest Fourth and Stark in Portland. There was a flood danger there, too, so we spent Saturday and Sunday moving everything out.
As I was driving up Interstate Avenue on the way home, a woman ran off the sidewalk and waved her arms up and down in front of me. She got into the car and frantically told me that Vanport was flooding. She lived there and asked me if I would help her move out. Of course I said yes.
But when we got to the stoplight at North Argyle Street, the road was closed. People were coming out in droves, most of them walking.
She got out, and I went over to Vancouver Avenue and up to Union Avenue (now Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard) to cross the Interstate Bridge. When I got to Union, there was a family walking on the right side. A mother, father and two little kids. The father was carrying a big shopping bag. I stopped and asked if I could take them somewhere. They got into the car, the father with his big empty shopping bag — that’s right, empty. Not a thing in it.
The father got into the front seat and said how thankful he was that they all got out alive. And that’s all he ever said. Nothing else.
I thought, what am I going to do with them? Maybe the Vancouver police station. I parked in front of the station, went in and told the police about the family and how the father would only say how thankful he was. The police thanked me for bringing them over and said they would take care of everything.
We had company come down from Tacoma that weekend. By Monday morning, the Interstate 5 Bridge was closed and portions of Highway 99 had been closed, too. To head home to Tacoma, our guests had to go all the way up the Washington side of the Columbia River to the Bridge of the Gods, over to Cascade Locks, and then back down the Oregon side of the river and all the way to the Lewis and Clark Bridge in Longview.
And I also had to go to the Bridge of the Gods and cross over to Cascade Locks in order to get to work that Monday. An additional 80 or so miles in my commute.
I have a vivid memory of that poor father and how the only thing he could think about was his family making it out of the flood. And what probably would have happened if they hadn’t.
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