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Russian River Community Prepares for Flooding as Soon as Monday

Shelters are shutting down and considering evacuations as a chain of atmospheric rivers stacked up in the Pacific Ocean barrel toward the North Bay.
Danielle Venton
a stormy, rainy day with a grey sky in Monte Rio, a community on the Russian River. A sign says 'Welcome to Monte Rio, vacation wonderland' as a car drives through the storm with headlights on
Rain falling in the Monte Rio/Guerneville area on the Russian River, on Jan. 4, 2023.  (Danielle Venton/KQED)

As rain falls in Guerneville, everyone is keeping a close eye on what the next few days hold.

The Russian River did not overflow its banks on Friday, as the National Weather Service predicted earlier in the week. But with another atmospheric river on the horizon this weekend, a moderate-to-severe flood is now expected early Monday. The residents of this small community 30 minutes west of Santa Rosa are doing all they can to get ready.

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“People out here are generally prepared. They’ve gone through this many, many times,” said Tim Miller, executive director of West County Community Services, which offers programs for older adults, mental health counseling and support to the unhoused in Sonoma County. Still, he noted, “We’re kind of glued to the various river monitors.”

Something that’s hard to predict, even for people who are used to this, is at what level the flood-prone Russian River may peak. That level determines which parts of the community are affected. “Everybody knows what floods at what foot out here,” said Miller.

The forecast for Monday shows that many roads will be impassable, so staff have already shut down their senior center and mental health counseling center, although they are still offering services over the phone. And Miller is evaluating whether those living in the shelter need to be bussed to higher ground. Outreach workers have spent days walking creeks and riverbeds speaking to unhoused people, he said, “getting people to move their encampments from 25 feet in the riverbed either into our shelter or just higher up, so they’re not taken away by the flood.”

For resident Kristen Thurman, who’s lived in her house on the Russian River for 40 years, this is familiar territory. The first major flood her family experienced was over Valentine’s Day weekend in 1986, which is still the largest flood on record to date in the area.

“The water came up to one level and stayed there for about a week, and then storms hit and it just came up so fast … it was about 3 feet in this house,” she remembered. She, her husband and their 3-year-old all stayed on the second floor for four days; she was also pregnant at the time. Her husband, Dan, would pull on waders, she said, and go downstairs to get cans of food from the kitchen.

After that, they bought flood insurance. And following the next big flood in 1995, the couple took out a second mortgage to raise the house a level, which has so far been enough to keep them dry.

a sign that says 'slide ahead' is seen as bulldozer cleans up debris from a mudslide along a wet road as cars pass by with their headlights on
A road crew cleans a mudslide off River Road near the Russian River as a powerful storm of rain and wind arrives in Guerneville on Jan. 5, 2023. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

“For those of us who have been through it a long time, it is just tedious, stressful, tiresome,” she said. But she’ll allow that it is also, at times, an “incredibly awesome” experience to watch the river.

Thurman said she’s most concerned about the unhoused community — she volunteers cooking meals for the Guerneville shelter — as well as residents who’ve recently moved to or started businesses in the area.

“They don’t know what’s coming,” she said. “I wish that we had more education on what it means to live on a flooding river.”

Thurman and her husband have even considered holding seminars about living with floods, she said. But for now, their family will move stuff in their basement to a higher place, check in with neighbors, hunker down and hope for the best.

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