'I didn't think it was possible,' small trailer park makes mighty recovery from February floods - East Oregonian

MISSION — Carol Hall walked down the dry gravel road and looked north over a field of overgrown weeds separating the small community known as Hall’s Trailer Park from the Umatilla River.

A gloom of wildfire smoke hung over the park of 20 manufactured homes nuzzled right on the border of the Umatilla Indian Reservation and Pendleton, something the clear face shield fastened to Hall’s eyeglasses, meant to protect her from COVID-19, couldn’t protect her from on Thursday, Sept. 17.

“With how much is going on this year, it’s hard to believe it was just a few months ago that we were underwater,” said Hall, 73.

The combination of snowmelt and rainfall lifted the Umatilla River from its banks in early February. The resulting floodwaters breached the levee in multiple points to the north of the trailer park, turned its gravel roads into channels of water and rose to levels that fortunately stopped at the first porch step to most resident’s homes.

A number of the park’s residents evacuated the night of Feb. 6 as the waters kept rising. When the waters finally receded, the park was left with roads of mud and yards of debris. One vacant home was permanently damaged and a portion of the landscape has been forever altered on the park’s northern end.

In the more than seven months since then, residents returned to their homes fortunate to find that somehow no water seeped into the foundations. The mud has been scraped away, debris has been removed and a new layer of gravel rests atop the roads.

Hall said the most obvious relic that remains from February’s flooding is the weeds that haven’t been tended to during the pandemic and now stand more than 6 feet tall.

“We may not look pretty, but we really lucked out,” she said. “I didn’t think it was possible.”

The recovery process started immediately after the flooding — a quick start that proved critical given the chaos and instability that followed in 2020.

While her tenants’ homes were spared in the flood, Hall faced a “double whammy” of damage to the park and personal losses suffered when groundwater surged through the wellhead in her basement.

As the floodwaters reached the steps of her front porch that day, Hall recalls looking down into her basement to see the slab of concrete covering the wellhead lifted inches into the air with water bubbling out and filling the basement.

“I hope I never see that again,” she said.

The water rose 4 feet up the walls of the room. Ultimately, Hall said she was without heat, plumbing or hot water following the flood.

In the aftermath, concerns about the safety and well-being of Hall’s tenants, along with the damage to her own home, were overwhelming. Hall didn’t own flood insurance, and many of her tenants are low income or rely on Social Security.

“I was an emotional wreck,” she said.

In the days and weeks that followed, the resiliency of the park’s community and the kindness of strangers alleviated that stress.

Hall’s son and friends helped pump the water from her basement, while the park’s residents worked together to begin the cleanup process. Whether it was Red Cross volunteers steering her to the right resources or the quick action from businesses in the area, Hall said she had people helping repair her personal damage and it was just a matter of weeks before her amenities were functioning once again.

“I couldn’t have done it without them,” she said.

Samaritan’s Purse, a nondenominational evangelical Christian organization, showed up within a week to help remove skirting from some homes. A few weekends later, dozens of members of the Pendleton Church of God organized a day of cleanup alongside the community that put a noticeable dent in the process.

The initial cleanup revealed that a portion of the park’s septic systems had been a casualty as well, with groundwater clogging pipes and rendering more tenants without plumbing. But Hall said it was the park’s own residents who went out to dig trenches and their quick work helped get the system revived before the coronavirus pandemic even began.

Residents again worked hand in hand with a community member who Hall said donated and dumped truckloads of gravel to resurface the roads.

Hall would wake up for weeks with the humidity from the water that flooded her basement leaving condensation dripping down her upstairs windows, and the bottoms of the walls in her basement remain cut open from circulating fans to try and dry it out. Once the pandemic allows for it, Hall said she hopes to bring in some contractors to complete restoration of the basement.

But the tenants who stepped up for one another and the outside community that chipped in have already made a lasting difference on the small trailer park’s recovery.

“My head was spinning,” Hall said. “How do you say thank you enough for saving all these people?”

As the smoke from wildfires that had recently destroyed hundreds of homes on the other side of the state clung in the air on Sept. 17, Hall pledged to find a way.

“If I could pay it forward somehow, I would,” she said. “I will pay it forward someday. I’ll find a way.”