Cayse Casey (yes – real name) first realized her business was in danger of flooding Monday afternoon while on the phone with her husband from inside her Oregon Street Antique Mall.
“I was talking to Roger and looking out the window,” she said Tuesday. “It was pouring rain, and I saw a truck across the street with water up to its tires.”
Casey hung up and looked out the front door. Dirty brown water had covered the street and was quickly rising. When the water swallowed about 1/3 of the sidewalk, Casey called Redding’s Public Works Department, where someone said a worker would be dispatched.
By then, water was creeping up Casey’s truck parked near the entrance, a sight that caused her to do something she now concedes was dangerous. She waded to her truck, drove across the street to Rite Aid’s parking lot on higher ground. The first glitch came when she tried to stop. Her wet brakes didn’t react at first, and the truck crashed into a fence. That wasn’t the worst of it. She still had to return to the store, which meant crossing a waterway.
“I jumped out of the truck and water was up to here,” she said as she pointed to mid-thigh. “By the time I reached the middle of the street the water was moving fast. I couldn’t find curbs with my feet. I just walked as slowly and carefully as I could. Really, when I think about it now …  I’m so lucky.”
When the water finally reached the antique mall’s front doors and its filthy waves started slapping and lapping against the glass, someone inside the store screamed, “It’s coming in!”
Casey dialed 911.
“I said, ‘My shop is flooding!’ and the woman said, ‘Call a plumber.’ I admit, I said a nasty word.”
Coincidentally, Monday afternoon was supposed to be a lucky day inside the antique mall, the beginning of a special two-day St. Patrick’s Day sale, a time to celebrate the store’s newest antique dealers, a time to demonstrate customer appreciation with refreshments and discounts.
Monday’s storm ignored Casey’s plans, and her day-glo-green “Lucky Day” display signs. Customers fled. As the water flowed indoors and made its way between store aisles, Casey was stunned by something else: Although all the surrounding businesses were also battling flood waters of their own, people rushed in to help.
A man came from the VFW Hall a few doors down and asked, “What can I do?” Perry Pickern left his Allstate insurance business across the street to pitch in. A woman whose apron was dusted with white powder said her boss sent her over from Moore’s Flour Mill to see what they could do. Workers from Rite Aid and Tapas Restaurant came, too.
And when Casey’s husband raced to Orchard Supply Hardware for brooms and supplies, an employee named Amanda donated a bucket load of towels and rags, because she said the Oregon Street Antique Mall was one of her favorite places. (Disclosure: Oregon Street Antique Mall is one of my favorite places, too, long before it became an advertiser.)
Of course, many of the Antique Mall’s dealers navigated the water to help save the precious, irreplaceable inventory, and when they did, Casey noticed something else.
“Not one dealer – not one – started working in their own booth first,” she said. “Everybody was just helping everybody. It was amazing.”
The impromptu emergency workers included Casey’s family – her husband, father, brother-in-law, sister, mother and daughter.
And then came food and drinks from Tapas Restaurant next door to feed the workers who slung sandbags, hauled out rugs and valuables, propped Styrofoam blocks under furniture legs, swept water and did everything humanly possible to turn the tide of water that flowed into the Oregon Street Antique Mall as if it owned the place.
The brown liquid – that a disaster clean-up man would later describe as “category 3” for its mixture of sewage, transmission fluids and rainwater – crept up the windows outside as everyone worked inside to save the antiques and precious, irreplaceable inventory.
“I felt like I was in an aquarium,” Casey said.
Outside, a female police officer and others pulled debris from where it blocked storm drains, which helped return the water to its rightful place. The water eventually receded. Casey and her family didn’t leave the store until nearly midnight.Â
Tuesday morning the sun shone outside as Casey, her family and some antique dealers scrubbed, swept and cleaned, over and over, as they tried to the flood’s leftover glass, garbage and filth. Quilts and rugs and fabrics were draped outdoors to dry.
As Casey told her story, and looked around her store, covered in silt, littered with plastic buckets, and blowers and cleaning rags, her voice choked as she summed up what she learned Monday.
“The lesson – that people will come together to help,” she said.
“Truly, they were amazing, wonderful people. Honest to God, had they not been here to help push the water out and carry things out … I can’t imagine. I learned that when fire and police couldn’t come – I know they were busy – I can count on my neighbors. It was really something.”
The new plan, if the weather cooperates and all goes well, is for Casey and her helpers and fellow antique dealers to open Oregon Street Antique Mall as soon as possible. The building’s owners, Phil and Kathy Barker, told Casey not to worry, that they’d take care of the structure’s damage.Â
Who knows. Maybe the Oregon Street Antique Mall can open Wednesday or Thursday.
After that, Casey looks forward to blue skies, nothing but blue skies.
