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Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend January 1, 2006 A large bus sits in silt alongside the swollen Rogue River near the Have-A-Nice-Day Campgrounds, where a dozen tenants had to move to higher ground when the Rogue River flooded on Friday. Mail Tribune / Roy Musitelli When the river rises, residents get out of way By GREG STILES Mail Tribune ROGUE RIVER — Steve Pirie sloshed through a layer of silt surrounding his vacation home on Fielder Lane near the Jackson-Josephine county line early Saturday afternoon. Following Friday night’s flooding when the Rogue River poured through several waterfront homes along the narrow road, the phone line was out. Pirie toted his phone to an outside jack, vainly attempting to get a dial tone. A dozen hours after four feet of water swept through his patio and into the lower floor of the house, the Fremont, Calif., resident bided his time, waiting for an insurance adjuster, taking pictures and chatting with whoever happened by. "If you want to live on a river, you have to put up with this," Pirie said matter-of-factly. "There’s nothing we can do about it except tear out the carpet, some insulation and sheetrock." The twisted hide-a-bed on the lower floor indicated an already-begun remodeling project will simply take on a grander scope. Advertisement Pirie and his wife, Sue, bought the two-story, 1,568-square-foot vacation home — built in 1947 on two-thirds of an acre along the north bank of the river — for $206,000 in November 2002. He’s well versed in the floods of 1964 and 1997, but figures the inconvenience is part of the price of enjoying trips to Mount Ashland in the winter and vacationing on the river during the summer. "The next nature of business is to get the wells back in order," said Pirie. "You certainly don’t want to drink the river water. I’ve seen gas, oil and paint cans going by." Pirie (pronounced Perry) was at his Bay Area home early in the week when he became aware of possible flooding and decided to drive up. He said the forecasts and Web pages monitoring water levels gave him a false sense of security in the hours before the Rogue began rising toward its late-night crest of nearly 24 feet a few miles downstream in Grants Pass. "The numbers we were watching at Gold Ray and Grants Pass were not showing much until noon Friday," Pirie said. But change came rapidly. Like many of the other inhabitants along this stretch of river, Pirie was amazed at the river’s swift rise above a 4-foot water break. "By 3 o’clock we were out of the house," said Pirie, who spent the night across stream at the Rogue River Inn. He said it took a while to notice the Rogue had done him a small favor: a 15-foot fir tree which blocked the view from his patio washed away. "The only thing we lost didn’t go far," said Pirie, pointing toward a yellow 12-foot boat that had been swept off its trailer and deposited about 100 yards away in neighbor Ernie Phillips’ yard. While the Piries were able to move most of their belongings to safety in the top story, Phillips didn’t have that luxury in his single-story home. Pirie said his neighbor’s house was a primary residence. "It’d be tough to live here 365 days (a year)," he said. "But when I leave here, I close the door and go home to a beautiful house." Not far downstream on the south bank, Barbara Blalock and her neighbor, Sherri O’Dell, surveyed the scene at River Front RV Park as heavy rain again descended. Blalock has lived in the small park for 7½ years, arriving soon after the 1997 flood. But while virtually everyone else in the park pulled their trailers out Friday, Blalock stayed on. "The water was up to the bottom of my trailer," she said. "I didn’t think my tires could make it, so I just decided it was best to wait it out." Saturday morning she discovered the stairs leading into her trailer had been washed several yards from her place. The newly planted lawns surrounding the park’s trailers were gone and so was much of the gravel. One other trailer, whose occupants were out of state on an 18-wheeler run, was still on its moorings. But two or three feet of water poured through the 35-footer before the river receded. A little upstream at Have-A-Nice-Day Campgrounds, J.D. Power was one of the last of a dozen tenants to flee from the riverside encampment to higher ground across Rogue River Highway. "It’s going to be several months before we can go back," Power said. "The power, cable and water lines all snapped. We had the 100-year storm in 1997, so I didn’t expect another one like this in 10 years." Reach reporter Greg Stiles at 776-4463 or e-mail When the river rises, residents get out of way ">[email protected] . 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