Been there, done it twice.

The first time was the worst. I drove to work (12 miles) and walked into the office and my boss met me at the door and said the local news said the freeway was being closed in about 15 minutes.

Drove home to high ground and stayed there for four days. Here in the PNW, I simply refuse to live in the flood plain.

My Mom and sister were living with me in a rental mobile home. We had plenty of food and stored water, but we never lost power.

The main problem was the septic. It was 20 years old, had two homes on it, and had never, ever, been cleaned out. With the water saturation of the soil, it was FULL and no longer usable.

I brought in my camping toilet, but we needed to empty it every 24 hrs since my sister is a chronic flusher. (No, my sister doesn't adapt to changing conditions, if you're wondering.) So we emptied it into 5-gallon buckets with lids and lined them up on the deck. On Day 5, the landlady called a septic pumping co and the guy did what should have been done months before, and cleaned out all the buckets, too.

When I bought my place, I prepared for my elderly Mom to be stranded there by herself if my sister or I couldn't get there: plenty of food, plenty of dog and cat food, stored water, extras of most of her meds, battery lanterns (6-volt- easy to hold, lots of light, safe), wood stove, firestarters and kindling nearby, and extra firewood of a size she could handle in a rack just outside the back door (under the deck roof), and an old phone with a cord that wasn't dependent on having power. And some dependable neighbors.

But when I got stuck the second time, I was already home, and the main problem was explaining to my dispatchers in Idaho that NO ONE was going into or coming out of Centralia, and neither were the trains.