1859 March | April 2018

Until Next Time
Delirious Turmoil
Life in a floating home during the 1996 flood
written by Clay Sparkman
IN 1995, I DECIDED a change was in order. I had lived all over Portland since my birth in 1959, and
though I loved it, I had always wanted to live in a floating home. In December 1995, I found just
what I was looking for—a two-story floating home on the Multnomah Channel, the waterway that
separates the old granddad Columbia River from Sauvie Island. My home-to-be had a Scappoose
address and was about 20 miles north of Northwest Portland via Highway 30.
I bought the property just in time for the great flood of 1996
to come rushing in. My life was a state of delirious turmoil
for at least ten days. The week of the flood, I managed to
move a few things into my home by wading through rising
water, which at that point was about chest-high.
As the days went by and the water continued to rise, I
couldn’t get back to my new home. Highway 30 and alternate
routes were all closed. Later in the week, I saw a chance. I
grabbed my drysuit and a life preserver and raced toward
my new home during a momentary road opening. Along
the way, I saw all sorts of madness—herds of cattle bunched
together and stranded on tiny, disappearing islands in the
channel, mudslides and fallen trees, new waterfalls and
streams beside and across the road, and houses and farms
giving way to the rising water.
I settled into my new home as best I could. They evacuated
the moorage next to mine on my first night there, and most
of the residents of Castleman’s Wharf chose to seek higher
ground. The moorage quickly ascended toward the tops of
the moorings, the long vertical logs that anchored the entire
moorage in place. Ordinarily the moorings show about 20
feet above the water line, but that had dropped to about 7
feet from the top that evening, with no end to the flooding
in sight.
Two of us decided to stay with our houses. I buddied up
with my neighbor Eric, an eccentric sculptor who owned a
canoe, an item that might prove useful at a moment’s notice.
After preparing for a possible evacuation (not a great mental
exercise, as I realized that not much was worth saving short
of my old gray snaggle-toothed cat, Parsifal), we settled back,
drank good wine and brandy and listened to Caribbean
music, dancing up and down the wooden planks of the
moorage. When you have done all that you can, there is
nothing left to do but party.
Just before going to bed at about 3 a.m., the world was
deathly quiet. I slept deeply for eight hours and awoke to
a world of hope. The rain had stopped and the sun was
beginning to appear. It seemed like a whole new world. We
still had 4 feet left on our moorings—a dangerous situation
due to the extreme leverage placed on the moorings by the
weight of the fast-flowing water. And yet I felt sure that the
worst was over.
The week that followed was a surreal adventure, and more
often than not, a pain in the ass. I had to purchase a canoe
in order to boat back and forth from my home to dry land, a
good quarter-mile away.
As the week unfolded, the dumpsters were dragged out of
flood waters and placed upright again, the well water restored
to a state of purity. The lights on the previously underwater
access road were repaired and the phone lines restored. And
as the flood waters receded, the storage shed and satellite
dish were de-mudded and gravel was laid over the oozing,
stinking, putrid muck that remained. Life got pretty much
back to normal, and I lived a good eight years on the channel
before returning to Northwest Portland. After that initiation,
the rest was a cruise.
120 1859 OREGON’S MAGAZINE MARCH | APRIL 2018