Flood of '48 remembered in Historical Society article

October 25 , 2007

Water reached the door of the Norse Hall on Puget Island during the 1948 floods. Photo provided by Gerald Davis.

The Wahkiakum County Historical Society has recorded an account of the 1948 Puget Island Flood.

Gerald (Jerry) E. Davis transcribed his father David Everett Davis' account of the flood and how it affected his family in March of this year.

"The whole Davis family was asleep with 18 inches of water in the house in the middle of the night. Generally about 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. or so. I cannot remember exactly. A truck came around the island with a loud speaker telling everyone to evacuate because of the high water and the danger of the dike breaking. We lived on the outside of the dike on the corner of East Sunny Sands and East Birnie Slough and that is why the water was already 18 inches into the house. This would not be too unusual because the house was basically a shack and it sat low near the slough. There was no sheetrock or lath and plaster or any insulation so the only thing to get wet was the wood boards that held the house together and whatever furniture might have been on the floor. Gerald does not know if anything of value was lost. Probably not since we didn't have much of value. Our youngest son Gerald (Jerry) was three years old and Jack, the eldest, would have been about seven.

We got up out of bed and got in the car and went down East Birnie Slough Road to my brother-in-law and sister-in-law Carl and Bev Seaberg, where we helped them move the piano from the house to the garage, which was about the height of the road.

Then everyone got into their cars and drove to Cathlamet where we all stayed for about one week at Beverly Seaberg's parents, Leonard and Mary (Aldred) Jacobson’s home in Rosedale, a suburb of Cathlamet.

The dike broke in the daylight. Many homes inside the dike suffered more damage with water near the ceilings as the homes were built lower inside the dike. So our house suffered less and we were back after a week.

The flood waters inside the dike stayed for a month and became a stinky, fetid mess."