It was dirty work, but many did it with a smile.
Neighbors around the Russian River were salvaging what they could and cleaning out the rest after the flooding that began the evening of Tuesday, Feb. 26.
Piles of damaged property lined River Road approaching Guerneville and lasted beyond Monte Rio. Garbage haulers worked their way down roads, picking it up. Heavy equipment moved propane tanks and refrigerators that swept through several yards.
Todd Puterbaugh lives east of Guerneville and was trapped in by the water.
“It rose quick,” he said, as he cleaned up.
He said his sister woke him up Wednesday morning around 5:30 a.m. He flipped on the TV and turned on the weather.
Puterbaugh moved from Petaluma a month ago. The water made it right up to the first-story window, between four and five feet up.
It was his first flood.
His mind was a blur when he realized how bad the flood had gotten.
“I need beer. I need to get out of here. I’m running low on water and food,” he said.
“I tried waking the neighbor up,” he said. “We pounded and pounded and pounded on his door because his car was going under. And it went under. The only thing you could see was the roof.”
He was going to stay at his sister’s but ended up at his raised apartment, where he watched the flood unfold.
“We never lost electricity or cable. Nope. Thank God,” he said.
Once the water went down, he started hauling everything out. Whatever wasn’t cleaned was taken out roadside. The lower level had to be sterilized before anything was brought back in.
“The owners were on it quick,” he said of his landlords, the Kents. “She (Andrea Kent) was here that next day, here with people to clean.”
He said the water went down quickly Thursday, and he was able to get to the market to resupply.
“A lot of people stayed, everyone out on their porches,” he said. “We became real close, all of us.”
Puterbaugh pointed to a woman cleaning up down the road.
“I didn’t even know her until this happened. We came to know each other, which, you know, we never did before.”
Just down the road, the Farmhand and Riverside Wellness dispensary were sorting out the mess in their shared building.
Though much of the cannabis was soaked, the tip jar survived for another day, a few bills still tucked into it.
Jason Flynn said he was looking at the security cameras and noticed the rising water.
“I tried to zoom back, but I couldn’t get in,” he said. The road had already been submerged.
On Neeley Road in Guerneville, the water swept a shed down the road, left redwood stumps on roofs and littered thousands of objects along the banks of the River.
Daniel Magdaleno was working for a few days to help clean Guerneville River Park and the surrounding property.
“I’m just doing what I can for the community,” he said, as he pried loose a garbage bin from a tree.
He was in the Santa Rosa shelter during the storm and was still staying there as of March 2. As he cleaned, he said he was looking more to the future.
“It’s best to just accept it and move on,” he said.
There were dangers hidden in the silt and branches, though. As he was making a pass through a thick patch, he came across an animal trap, rusted and sticking out of the mud.
Cathy Smith was one of the friends and volunteers cleaning up the Play Land mini-golf course.
“I think this maybe a two-day job,” she said with a smile.
She said she was friends with the new owners Tom and Sandy Glober and wanted to lend a hand.
“I had my first date here,” she said. The two are still happily married decades later.
Smith was confident in the cleanup.
“When the kids come back in June, it’ll look like nothing happened,” she said.
Across the road, Roland Oltmann had more rebuilding to do. He had just bought Redwood Campground last fall and was washing out silt.
A wooden fence reinforced with concrete had been torn down along with an entire wall of his main building.
Alexis Smith and Carley Weaver weathered the flood in their home on Center Way. They pointed to the lines at the tops of the minivan and garage door where sediment marked the high water.
“We did not sleep Tuesday night at all,” Smith said.
She recalled how the water first reached ankle depth, then knee, then waist, until it would be over her head.
“We had seven steps left, including the top step,” she said of her raised home.
Once the land reappeared, one of the first things to be cleaned was a propane tank that went through a neighbor’s fence.
“It smelled terrible,” Smith said.
Even with all the damage and trash, people along the river know to expect such things. Doc Holoday was out taking pictures of the damage. Holoday has been living in the area for more than two decades now.
“I always ask people when they move here, ‘What color is your boat?’ And they say, ‘I don’t have a boat.’ And I say, ‘Well, how’re you going to get to Safeway?’” he said.
Along the main drag of Guerenville, things weren’t always so bad. Coffee shops and bars filled with people exchanging stories over drinks. “Open” balloons waved in the light breeze outside open doors.
One of the baristas said there hadn’t even been signs of water coming into the shop and the neighboring book store was putting books back onto the bottom shelf, better safe than sorry.
Some in the center of Monte Rio were not as lucky.
Janie Frigault was at one of the Red Cross stations in flooded areas. She said she had given out 97 disaster kits, as of Saturday afternoon.
Across the way, the Rio Theater had taken on water up to the top row of seats.
Co-owner Colin Mutchler examined the line on the wall and compared it to a plaque marking the 1995 high water mark. It wasn’t as high, but it made it up about four feet at the low point of the slanted aisles.
There was a faint scent of vinegar in the air, and Mutchler explained that the seats had been washed with it to try and prevent molding.
Co-owner Dermot Hickisch explained that the marquee was an homage to the ’95 flood. It read “A River Runs Through It, The Sequel.” The ’95 marquee being the original.
This was his first major flood.
“This one was really big and came up really fast,” he said. “You just got to conserve energy. The most amazing part was how water moved things.”
His wife and business partner, Maura Dilley, said, “We have an 8-month old baby, and this is his fourth natural disaster.”
Hickisch said the theater had been prepared for a flood, but he is looking to make improvements going forward. Like so many other businesses, there was only so much he could do to fight the rising river.
