Surprise Storm

Summary:

THE FATALITIES: Four people die in a mudslide, and a falling tree kills a fifth

THE FORECAST: Another storm is due Thursday, but it probably won't be as wet

A "liquid river of mud" killed four people when it engulfed a house near Umpqua in Douglas County, and Oregonians fought flooding, mudslides and slick roads Tuesday.

A fifth death came northwest of Yakima when a snow-laden tree crashed onto a motor home and killed a sleeping hunter.

Tuesday night, a slide hit a car with at least two people in it on the Otter Crest Loop highway between Lincoln City and Newport on the central Oregon coast, the Oregon State Police and the U.S. Coast Guard reported.

And While although another storm is due in to the region late Thursday, it will be weaker, and the rain won't be as heavy as Monday's and Tuesday's downpours.

"The storm coming in will not have the tropical tap this one did," Scott Weishaar, National Weather Service forecaster, said Tuesday night.

The wild weather may not be over for this week, forecasters said.

"Tomorrow is going to be a relatively calm day. Then we'll have a similar storm coming up later in the week," said Ira Kosovitz, a forecaster with the National Weather Service.

State Oregon Department of Transportation officials described travel conditions as "extremely hazardous" and urged motorists to drive as little as possible.

The worst came Monday night when Rick and Susan Moon were killed in their rural home along with two visitors, neighbor Sharon Marvin and Roseburg resident Ann Maxwell.

The couple's two children -- Rachelle, 16, and Justin, 13 -- survived thanks to warning shouts from a neighbor.

"The kids had to be quicker, had to be luckier, or both," Douglas County sheriff's Capt. Robert Stratton said.

The torrential rain, Stratton said, "made a liquid river of mud that demolished the house" in a rugged, forested area about 30 miles northwest of Roseburg.

Neighbor Jeffrey Orr said, "There was just a roar when it came." neighbor Jeffrey Orr said. Orr had joined the Moons, the Marvins and several other families 24 years ago in jointly buying 160 acres, calling the assemblage "Stump Acres."

"There were several other people who lived up there that got lucky because the slide just missed them," Orr said. "These were real nice people who didn't deserve anything like this to happen to them."

The house sat about 300 yards above Hubbard Creek Road. The slide splintered the structure into fragments, leaving jackets, running shoes, credit cards, children's toys and a lifetime of other accumulations strewn through the 4-foot-deep mire covering everything in its the slide's path.

The Washington death occurred about 3 a.m. when a tree fell onto the motor home and instantly killed Gregory W. Carlson, 29, of Colbert. The dead man's father and uncle were also in the motor home but were not hurt, said Frank Johnson, a firefighter at the scene.

- Landslides flip trucks

Meanwhile, motorists stranded overnight along the Umpqua River told Tuesday of landslides so big that they flipped log trucks and left one man pinned in his cab, cut off from outside help.

A group of trapped motorists used borrowed saws and jacks to rescue the Reedsport man through the door of his truck cab, the only part of his log truck not buried in mud.

"Nobody could have done it without everybody else's help," said Henry Ahlquist, 28, of Cheyenne, Wyo.

He and Jason Manzanares, 25, also of Cheyenne, were among a half-dozen people who worked in waist-deep mud to save Jack Gillem of Reedsport.

They located a saw and cut off the steering wheel of Gillem's truck. Still, Gillem hung nearly upside down, trapped by the dashboard, his leg pinned by a lever.

"We stayed with him the whole time," Ahlquist said. "We would say what tools we needed, and people would go look for them." They used pieces of lumber and jacks to free Gillem.

When Gillem was free, they broke into a nearby home, where about 15 of the more than 20 stranded people spent the night.

On Tuesday, rescue personnel used inflatable boats to take Gillem and Glen Bales, who broke his whose left leg broke when his pickup was caught in a nearby slide, down the Umpqua River. Gillem was listed in stable condition at Lower Umpqua Hospital.

- Rising rivers watched

Throughout the state, officials kept a close watch on rising rivers.

In Lane County, where Gov. John Kitzhaber declared a state of emergency. Volunteers and businesses mobilized to fill thousands of sandbags to contain flooding along the Mohawk River between Eugene and Springfield, and along the Coast Fork of the Willamette south of Cottage Grove. Both rivers also were major main sources of flooding in February.

At the same time, about half the residents in the Mohawk Valley voluntarily evacuated the area at the urging of after being urged to do so by emergency officials.

"That's higher than we got initially last February," said Ernie Loy of the Lane County sheriff's office.

"One thing we learned from February: Those roads became totally impassable. Even if the homes were not impacted, they either had to get out or be prepared for being cut off from public services for some time."

Volunteers also were filling sandbags in Albany to contain the Willamette River, which was predicted to crest this afternoon at 27.5 feet, about 1.5 feet lower than the crest of last winter's flooding.

In Turner, on the southern outskirts of Salem, flooding from Mill Creek closed shut down the town to outsiders and threatened several dozen homes.

- Mill Creek floods

"Mill Creek's come over its banks, and we're about where we were last February," City Administrator Chuck Spies said. "All but one road in and out of Turner are nearly impassable. We've basically closed the town down."

On Interstate 5, traffic was backed up near Albany for throughout much of the day because of high water. Oregon 99W near McMinnville also was temporarily closed because of flooding, and while several key coastal roads from Reedsport south were closed by flooding and slides.

The weather problems stretched across the Cascades.

High winds made it harder for utility workers to restore electricity to hundreds of Central Oregon residents.

Jim Crowell, a spokesman for Central Electric Cooperative in Redmond, said about 300 customers still were without electricity Tuesday night. About 1,500 homes and businesses supplied by the co-op lost power during Monday's heavy snowstorm.

Firefighters said a blaze at the Dee Hardboard Plant south of Hood River started when the main building's roof caved in about 4 a.m. The fire caused extensive damage in throughout the sprawling complex, but no injuries were reported.

Peter Farrell of The Oregonian staff and correspondents John Griffith, Jeanie Senior, Janet Filips, Carmel Finley, Gordon Gregory and Eric Gorski contributed to this report.