Residents Keep Careful Watch On Swollen River Officials Say Waters Receding But Could Come Back Up

Stephen Futo is still too nervous to unpack three closet-sized cardboard boxes.

And he doesn’t even live on the first floor.

The Upriver Drive apartment tenant isn’t alone. Residents of the lowlands are still keeping a wary eye on the swollen Spokane River.

Even though the river is now receding, city officials warn residents along Upriver Drive and in Peaceful Valley not to tear down sandbag walls yet. There is still snow melting on the mountains, so the river may rise again, officials said Wednesday.

“I’m not taking the sandbags down until I can see the Centennial Trail,” said Jon Ogle, maintenance manager of the Edgewater Apartments on Upriver.

For several days, he watched from his backdoor window as water worked its way past the riverbank. He still has everything moved upstairs except for his bare necessities - a television, a couch and a chair.

Devin Bennett lives in a neighboring apartment. She thought it was neat to watch the waters rise for a while. Then she got worried.

“I thought it was cool at first, to see all the kids swimming in the street,” Bennett said. “But when it got closer, then it became a threat and it was scary.”

Bennett was one of about 50 Edgewater Apartment residents who helped Ogle fill and stack sandbags along the river.

In Peaceful Valley west of downtown, Joey Bascettas’s deck was a dock, and his hot tub was floating loose of its moorings.

Not to worry, he told his neighbors Tuesday. If the river rose a couple more inches and the tub started to go, he invited them to grab a martini and party all the way downstream.

The river receded, and the fun was canceled. By Wednesday, the water lapped several feet below the tops of sandbag walls hastily erected last weekend.

Half the Peaceful Valley RiverWalk park and all its picnic tables remain submerged. Sewer drains percolated like drinking fountains, flooding a low area along Water Street.

Few residents admitted being worried.

“Only a fool would live this close and not think the river would come up,” said Mary Jo Faulhaber, whose family has lived at the corner of Water and Cedar streets for 40 years.

The flower garden of her home on Water Street was irrigated by two feet of water, but her basement was protected by stacks of sandbags. “This is just deep soaking,” she joked, pointing to her drowned lillies.

While Peaceful Valley residents joked, visitors to the Spokane Falls gawked at the spectacle of crashing water downtown.

Indeed, high water is often more a tourist attraction than a disaster in Spokane. No homes have been seriously damaged this time around, and city and county engineers believe bridges are holding up well under the extra water pressure.

“There’s certainly no indication we’ve got a problem,” said Phil Williams, the city’s director of planning and engineering services.

Just east of the falls, usually dry sections of Riverfront Park were soaked as well.

The lower section of stairs leading to the Carrousel, where parkgoers usually feed ducks, were still submerged Wednesday. City workers blocked off two suspension bridges and rerouted the tour train’s route last weekend.

Two women, one pushing a child in a stroller, approached the knee-high orange fencing blocking off the Carousel steps Tuesday.

Benches at the foot of the steps were soaked at the legs from river water and soggy at the top from the sea of gulls perched upon them.

The child cheered, “Water, water,” as one woman said to the other: “The city is going to need to replace those benches when the sea gulls are done with them.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Photos (1 Color); Graphic: The Spokane River’s raging waters

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Isamu Jordan and Jonathan Martin Staff writers Staff writer Dan Hansen contributed to this report.