Water soaked the walls and floor of the fair office,

above, and the deck floated from the right side to

the front. County commissioners this week

authorized the replacement of the building.

Wahkiakum County officials agreed Tuesday on first steps to address flood damage at the county fair grounds.

Commissioners Dan Cothren and Tom Doumit authorized Interim Fair Manager Esther Gregg to hire four workers to begin cleaning, and they authorized her to partition off a temporary office in the T Building while officials search for a new building to replace the flooded fair office.

The fair office sustained water damage during November flooding. It now has lots of mildew, she said. She wants to remove salvageable records and clear the site so another office can be installed.

Also, the food building sustained damage, with flood waters clogging stoves and refrigerators and stirring around the wooden tables and counters in the building. The electrical equipment will have to be replaced.

Bill Coons, president of the Wahkiakum Fair Board, said that other buildings sustained damage, but not as bad as the office and food booths. The flood waters also carried buoyant objects around; a deck that was once at the side of the office is now sitting 90 degrees around the building against the front porch.

The food booth is a jumble of tossed counter

and flooded appliances.

Gregg, Coons and county officials held a workshop Tuesday to plan how to address the situation.

Gregg commented that the new office needs to be in place by June, when fair preparations begin in earnest, not August, when the fair occurs.

Permit Coordinator Chuck Beyer said the cost of replacing the fair office and taking care of the other damage would be approximately $100,000. A new modular home office would run about $65,000.

The group also wondered about putting the office back on its present site where it could be flooded again. One option would be to raise it level with the T Building floor which didn’t flood.

The group agreed that once the flooded office is cleaned out, the best way to get rid of it would be to have an excavator demolish it and load it into a dump box for disposal.