Profiles of three victims waylaid by Russian River’s swift floodwaters

The brown floodwater has receded. Ruined possessions have been lamented, then discarded.

The waist- and chest- and head-high mounds of debris along low-lying streets in communities near the Russian River soon will be deposited in dumpsters and hauled away.

Now comes the less public and more prolonged phase of recovery, as home and business owners grapple with banks, insurance companies and excruciating decisions.

Some will emerge from the ordeal stronger. Others will admit defeat and move away.

Here are the stories of three Russian River residents, all of whom suffered considerable damage to their homes and businesses in the worst flooding in Sonoma County since 1995.

Facing a cash crunch

She cannot seem to help herself. Karen O'Brien goes through life with an abiding belief that things will work out for the best. As the floodwaters rose around her 11-unit resort in Monte Rio, she had the patio furniture stacked on the upper terrace, where surely it would be out of harm's way.

It was not, and floated away. On the bright side, she notes, the current carried most of those tables and chairs into a kind of strainer formed by her fence. Many of those pieces were recovered.

O'Brien had hoped to reopen her Inn on the Russian River by the end of March. “That turned out to be unrealistic,” she allowed with a wry smile, “so now I'm really hoping for a partial open by mid-April.”

She recently called her bank and asked for a favor. Would it please hold off on depositing her mortgage check? Like many area merchants in the wake of this disaster, she is working through some liquidity issues. The bank, alas, could not and proceeded to deposit that $9,000 check. “I'm not blaming them,” she says. That check, she suspects, “was probably already in the system.”

It was obvious, as O'Brien pointed out the lawn and meadow, the dancing area and fire pit on the little property, that she's given this tour many times, to prospective newlyweds searching for a place to tie the knot. Indeed, weddings have made up a significant chunk of her business since she bought the place in the summer of 2014.

Because of the wildfires, she said, “my wedding business has been down by like, 50 percent,” each of the last two summers. That's an annual loss of $40,000, she estimated - funds that normally carry her through the lean offseason.

Crunched for cash after last summer, she leaned more heavily on credit cards than she would have liked. Then the river rose. “I don't think I'm going to lose the place,” she said, walking past units that had been stripped to the studs and awaited power washing, “but my problem right now is that I need to pay people, and I don't have any income. I have the opposite of income.”

Forced to cancel a late March wedding, she recently refunded the couple the lodging deposit.

Of course the floods are traumatic, she agrees. But in the process of renovating, “most of the businesses get better. We're forced by the banks and the county to improve and upgrade.”

With O'Brien, there's always a bright side.

“Come May, we're gonna be looking really good again.”

Coffee shop inundated

Located on Third Street in Guerneville, Higher Ground Organic Espresso sits farther north from the Russian River than many of the town's businesses - far enough away that owner Emilie Navarro doubted the floodwaters would reach her doorstep. But the river kept rising until, around midday on Tuesday, “my intuition told me to start moving things upstairs.”

The time had come for Higher Ground to seek higher ground.

The upstairs unit, usually rented, happened to be vacant. Friends were summoned, a high-speed transfer was conducted. Up the stairs went books and furniture, coffees and teas, condiments and cartons of various milks. In the eight years she has owned it, Navarro has made Higher Ground a showcase for area artists and craftspeople. Paintings were removed from walls, jewelry from shelves.

Last to go: the beating heart of the business, its espresso machine. Until it was unplugged, Navarro had stayed at her post - think of the orchestra on the deck of the Titanic - pulling shots, making drinks, dispensing caffeine and kind words to townsfolk, many whose possessions already were underwater.

After a day of cleanup, the upstairs, “pop-up” version of Higher Ground opened for business, and has been open every day. Since the flood, Navarro has stopped charging patrons for beverages, although she does accept donations. Until it closed Saturday, she gifted coffee to the workers at the local assistance center, across Third Street.

Navarro is looking at “the beginning of April” for Higher Ground's official reopening. For now, the gutted shop is home to a dehumidifier and several industrial-strength fans.

“I've had my moments of feeling desperate and overwhelmed,” she said. “But that quickly turns to gratitude.” She is buoyed, in particular, by her customers, many of whom have become close friends. “I mean, you drink coffee with the same people every morning, you get pretty close to them.”

Moments later, Corey Weaver, a local coffee bean roaster, came up the steps. “Need a cuppa?” asked Navarro. While she poured his coffee, Weaver decanted his woes: having run over some debris on his way into town, his car had not one but two flat tires.

In Navarro, he found a sympathetic ear. She had just finished applying the whipped cream to a sinfully good-looking mocha for a customer named Kevin O'Connor, who was pleased to point out the motto on the mug she handed him: It's All Good.

‘Dream house' ruined

Igor Rozov stood in the doorway of his rambling, wood-shingled house on River Drive, in the shadow of the Hacienda Bridge.

“Welcome to my heaven,” said the 60-year-old native of Archangel, Russia. While the redwoods above and river beyond did make for a stellar setting, Rozov was joking. Inside his “dream house,” as he calls it, the disaster lingered. The piano toppled by floodwaters once again was upright, but ruined, a dramatic curve in the line of white keys. A stubborn layer of silt and mud clung to the floor. His bedroom was a jumble, a Dali painting, of sodden furniture at unlikely angles.

His insurance, he'd recently learned, will cover “structural damage” to his house, which suffered little structural damage. “But they don't cover nothing inside,” Rozov sighed.

Since the flood, he'd been crashing at a friend's house. Friday was his first night back. It promised to be a cold one. Would he be OK? Rozov's reply was quintessentially Russian: “What is suffering?” Since he was a 10-year-old in Archangel, he went on, “I go outside in the cold to fetch the water, to chop the wood. It's not suffering for me.”

An elite swimmer, he attended medical school in Russia, where he was a pediatrician for 10 years. He no longer practices medicine. These days, Rozov earns his living as a sterile processing technician for Kaiser Permanente. On a visit to the Bay Area in the mid-'90s, he drove south to San Diego on the Pacific Coast Highway. It was, he recalls, “a life-changing experience.”

Ever since he was a boy, splashing around in the White Sea, he'd been fascinated by ocean life, the hidden world under the water. Entranced by the Pacific, he immigrated to California. He describes the water as “my spiritual sanctuary.”

It also was the water, he acknowledged, that knocked him on his figurative backside. Did that make him feel differently about the river?

He shook his head and quoted a sign he'd seen in Guerneville: “We love our river. The water makes our roots grow deeper.”

To underscore his point, he flung open the door to a bedroom where he'd be spending the night in a sleeping bag, warmed by a propane-fueled heater. Beyond the door: his balcony, a beach and then the river, shimmering under the first sunshine in what felt like forever.

“Look at this beauty,” he proclaimed. This time he wasn't joking.

Staff Writer Austin Murphy can be reached at 707-521-5285 or austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com.