ROSEBURG, Ore. — Twenty years ago, heavy rain started falling in mid-November in Douglas County, and it seemed like it would never end.
The ground became so saturated that it caused floods, landslides, fallen trees, power outages and road washouts including a huge sinkhole on Interstate 5 in Roseburg, Ore.
National weather service meteorologists said almost 2 inches of rain fell on Nov. 18 and then 4.35 inches of rain fell on Nov. 19. That was the highest one day total ever for Roseburg, Ore., since the Weather Service began keeping records.
The damage in Douglas County was widespread.
Wayne Stinson, the Emergency Services Manager for Douglas County, said when he thinks about the 1996-97 storms, the number of lives lost is the biggest thing that comes to his mind.
“When you put in the loss of life, it was one of the worst years we ever had,” Stinson told The News-Review .
Four people died in a landslide the evening of Nov. 20, 1996, near Umpqua, Ore., when mud, boulders and trees came roaring down the hillside into Hubbard Creek, taking out a home in their path. Rick and Susan Moon and two friends, Sharon Marvin and Ann Maxwell, all died in the slide.
A Myrtle Creek man, Arnold Ryder, who was 70 years old at the time, vividly remembers what happened. He was delivering News-Review newspapers to residences along Hubbard Creek, and nearly met his demise when he was swept away in the mud and pinned under a tree.
“Seems like just yesterday,” said Ryder, a World War II veteran, who is now 90.
Ryder recovered from the harrowing experience, but he knows he was lucky to have survived.
He was on his route that day, and found the road along Hubbard Creek a little muddy. Ryder saw some people digging drainage ditches, so he went to see if he could help, but he got stuck. He had to go to a house to call for help, and when he left the house he headed back to his vehicle.
“I went up the hill and all of a sudden I heard a rumble and looked up and the whole mountain was coming down. I grabbed a tree and hung onto it, but it took me and the tree both,” Ryder said. “Scared the hell out of me.”
Ryder was buried in mud with a tree across his leg. It took rescuers two hours to get him out.
“I worked like the devil to get my pants back on, because the mud pulled them off. Then when they got me up in the ambulance, the first thing they did was cut my pants off,” said Ryder.
He was laid up for 30 days, but he was one of the lucky ones.
The disasters just kept happening. The day after the Hubbard Creek slide, two lanes of I-5, just south of the Harvard Avenue exit, slid into the South Umpqua River across from Templin Beach in Roseburg, Ore.
It was an absolute miracle that no one was killed when the early morning sinkhole developed, and swallowed up a Reddaway triple trailer. It also caused a United Grocers truck to crash, with the cab getting almost split in half by the guard rail. Only one person was injured. A man who was traveling through the area in his small pickup, got out and tried to flag down traffic and was struck by a truck, but he survived.
The Weather Service reported just over 9.3 inches of precipitation for the month of November. December was even wetter with almost 16 inches, one of the wettest months on record.
