Benefield: Why these longtime Russian River-area residents stay despite the risk of floods

Jenn Otten stands on the deck of her Rio Nido home as a light rain falls during a welcome break between major storms.

It’s cold. The temperature gauge reads 51 degrees. She’s wearing flip-flops.

They give her an air of casual confidence — joie de vivre driven home by her easy laugh.

But on the eve of what could be historic storms hitting the North Bay and threatening the Russian River and all who live on it, Otten has earned her confidence.

It’s hard won. And it’s anything but casual.

Otten’s confidence is born of being informed and prepared.

“I have my generators going, I have my cords all set up, gas tanks are all full. Everything is covered,” she said. “I have tarped off some areas, I have stocked up on all supplies. I have a propane fireplace. I have everything I need.”

A weather radio chirps wind and rain updates from inside her house.

From her home, perched on the steep hillside above the Rio Nido Roadhouse and the Rio Nido Lodge, Otten is prepared to ride the storm out.

But she’ll monitor every minute of it.

“It makes me a little nervous,” she said. “They have been talking to some atmospheric river scientist, their concerns were alarming. The fact that there is not just one, but two, then three, now four, storms.”

As of late Friday, several inches of rain were predicted to fall Saturday night into Sunday with still more coming down Sunday through Tuesday. The river was expected to reach seven feet above flood stage by Tuesday evening.

* * *

This storm is not Kayte Guglielmino’s first rodeo. She’s a river lifer.

She moved to Guernewood Park when she was 4 and has lived every one of her subsequent years in Guerneville, barring one.

In a housing pinch once, she moved to Forestville for a year before realizing she couldn’t be away from her community.

“I love it here,” she said. “I can’t get enough.”

Guglielmino’s devotion to her hometown means she’s seen it all.

As a kid she rode the swaying bridge in storms.

She and her friends used the massive dinosaur statue at the flood-prone Pee Wee golf course on Drake Road as a bellwether.

“If it was still raining and his neck was coming out of the water we knew it’s going to be a really big flood,” she said.

When the floods made news, she’d hop on boats ferrying reporters to storm sites, pointing out local landmarks.

A tour guide of sorts.

“I would get in the boat and say ‘Oh this is so and so and this is where my friend lives and this is where we get to go to school,’” she said. “We would see the same reporters every flood.”

They occur with that kind of regularity.

But Guglielmino is no longer a kid.

Today when it rains, she worries. Every waterlogged home, every mud-soaked business has a face behind it.

Usually a friend’s.

“It’s not exciting when you know the impact of the flood. It’s your friends, your family businesses. It’s a lot different,” she said. “Now it’s scary when it floods because I know everybody here.”

* * *

For Otten, her immediate concerns during these storms are the massive trees that loom over her home and every home in her neighborhood.

“When the wind blows, it’s mind numbing almost,” she said. “When the trees are swaying and moving and you hear them creaking, you can feel your heart sink a little bit.”

And it doesn’t have to be a whole tree, dislodged by a torrent of rainwater. It can be a waterlogged limb that grows heavy and breaks from the tree.

Otten calls those “widowmakers.”

The fear is real.

In an unfathomable tragedy Wednesday evening, a massive redwood fell on a home in Occidental, killing a 2-year-old boy.

Otten said she and her neighbors regularly monitor trees around their collective homes. One neighbor is an arborist.

They keep him busy.

“Two decades ago a 150 or 180-foot tree took out a house across the street from me,” she said. “It missed us by 20 feet, but right after that we took down about seven trees around my property.”

Rio Nido is the tiniest of hamlets, tucked up above the roadhouse and the lodge off of River Road, a loop of homes that were used as summer cabins.

The towering trees, which keep things exceedingly damp and dark all winter, are the same trees that provide gorgeous shade in the summer.

“The nights are so lovely,” she said.

On Friday, Otten’s power had returned and she readied for another round of storms expected to pound the area into the weekend.

Her weather radio sounded in the background. She listens for winds and rain reports, high tides and low tides.

Though the rain slowed Friday, she remained vigilant and urged others to stay alert, too.

“Don’t let your guard down now,” she said. “Do that at the end, when it’s time to clean up.”

* * *

In 2019, Guglielmino’s Guerneville home was destroyed by a falling tree.

She’s been here long enough she can gauge the river by how high it rises on the back steps at Stumptown Brewery, her across-the-street neighbor for a time.

One year it signaled it was time to evacuate.

“I go in the back and see how far up the water is coming. The water was a couple feet under the deck so I ordered dinner, talked to some friends,” she said. “We ate and went back to see where the water level was and it was coming onto the back deck so we all had to get out of Dodge.”

Still, she won’t leave.

She loves the diversity. She loves that Guerneville is known for its embrace of the LGBTQ+ community.

Downtown Guerneville is the funkiest tiny metropolis anyone could want.

Swanky restaurants bump up next to a 5 & 10 and a tackle shop.

It’s an all comers place that come summertime can be wall-to-wall inner tubes and sunburns.

But Guglielimino just calls it home. And she doesn’t begrudge the winters.

She even has a routine when the big storms hit, she said.

“We have a turkey dinner before the power goes out and we have sandwiches for days,” she said.

It’s the flood recipe.

She knows it by heart.

* * *

Unlike Guglielmino, Otten has lived elsewhere.

For portions of her life, the river was where she came on weekends or for long summers.

“It was the Tahoe for the people who couldn’t afford to go to Tahoe,” she said.

She remembers all the kids hanging out at the game room at the Rio Nido Lodge just down the road from her place. She learned to play pool there.

“The parents would go to the Hofbrau and the kids would get Shirley Temples,” she said.

But now it’s home, and the floods, the wet winters, the threat of wildfires — those things don’t weaken her feelings for the place.

The structures that used to serve as summer cabins are now homes. Her neighbors are her friends. They are in this together.

They have to be. They share a looping road that is narrow and windy and a little treacherous in the darkness and wet.

The houses feel very close together and yet secluded at the same time.

That neighborly bond is almost strengthened by what Mother Nature throws their way.

Every season of woe shines a bright light on what keeps her here: Her neighbors, her community.

She’ll take that trade off.

“It’s the choice you grapple with when you live here,” she said.

For Otten and so many others, living on the river is not a choice, it’s just what is.

“It’s not for the faint of heart,” she said. “But everyone wants to come and visit.”

* * *

I called Jennifer Wertz of the Russian River Alliance for this column.

She, like others, leads her answers about why people put up with so much woe from Mother Nature with one word “community.”

There is something about living on the river that people who love it just can’t quit, and largely it’s their neighbors.

Wertz is immeasurably tapped into the community. She’s constantly busy with assists.

When I reached her the first time, she was buying gift cards for river residents in need.

The second time, she was en route to help tow trailers that owners worried were at too low of an elevation.

At one point I asked why? Why do river dwellers do it? Why do they stay, flood after flood?

“Because we’re crazy,” she said. “The end.”

But she was laughing when she said it.

But then she had to go, she was on the move to help another neighbor.

You can reach Staff Columnist Kerry Benefield at 707-526-8671 or kerry.benefield@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @benefield.