U.S. & World

CHEHALIS, Wash. (CBS News) ― A storm that battered the Pacific Northwest for two days moved on, leaving behind flooded homes, fallen trees and washed-out roads, including the region's largest highway, which was covered with 10 feet of muddy water.

The one-two punch of back-to-back storms is the worst people can remember, reports CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker. The scope of the devastation is staggering. At least seven people are dead and hundreds of thousands are left without power.

In Centralia, Washington, police used small boats to evacuate neighborhoods inundated by floodwaters from the Chehalis River.

Luis Villanueva's house was a half mile from the river until this week. Now it's in the river, reports Whitaker. Villanueva and his wife had five minutes to flee.

"The water was coming fast," Villanueva said.

The same river left three miles of Interstate 5 under water, closing the region's major north-south thoroughfare.

The water covered dozens of businesses in Chehalis, Wash., reports CBS News correspondent Stephan Kaufman. "Everything in front of me is under water, from a Super K-Mart to a Shell station to a lumberyard to whatever business is out there, it's all under water."

"The economy is going to be slowed up for quite a period of time, especially around the holidays. Jobs - people are going to be out of work," said resident Ken Shilling.

Although rain eased overnight, runoff continued to feed the river, which crested at record highs, breaking a record from 1996, when flooding closed the freeway for four days.

State officials hoped to open the highway Thursday, but were waiting to see what damage the flooding might have done.

"We've got to be able to see if we have structural integrity in the highway," said David Dye, deputy secretary of transportation. "We've got lots of debris, garbage, tires, dead rats everywhere."

"Just off to my right is a gentleman in a kayak coming down the southbound lanes of Interstate 5, and he's heading right underneath the bridge, where cars and trucks are supposed to be," said Kaufman.

In Oregon, a mountain timber town called Vernonia was largely cut off by landslides, but National Guard trucks with high clearance were able to get in. Troops used inflatable rafts to evacuate flooded residents from the community of about 2,300 on the Nehalem River, about 35 miles northwest of Portland.

As the center of Vernonia filled with water, people moved to shelters and higher ground. The muddy water filled with sewage and debris.

In Tillamook, Oregon, home to large dairy cattle herds, the smell of manure was pervasive as shopkeepers downtown shoveled out their businesses. At the Wilson River RV Park, one vehicle was on its side, and others were in mud 6 inches to 8 inches deep.

Ben and Amanda Beal had moved to a motel with their two young children when police notified everyone in the hotel to evacuate. Just as they left the parking lot, waves swelled over Highway 101.

"I thought we were going to be swept away," said Amanda Beal. "You could feel the water pushing the Blazer. The winds were blowing at 100 miles per hour."

"We just panicked," Ben Beal said.

"This wasn't like anything I've seen," Amanda Beal said. "It was terrifying, we were pretty much helpless."

The storm, the last of three severe weather systems to smack the region, moved into British Columbia on Tuesday and began to dissipate, the National Weather Service said. The earlier storms carried heavy snow to the Upper Plains, the Midwest and the Northeast.

Coast Guard crews continued to pluck stranded residents from flooded areas. A total of 131 people had been rescued as of Tuesday morning, with at least 40 of them hoisted by a Coast Guard helicopter, said spokeswoman Mandi Ruch in Seattle.

Many schools and government offices were closed for a second day. Mudslides also halted Amtrak passenger service between Portland and Vancouver, British Columbia.

Nearly 75,000 customers lost power in Washington, and more than 50,000 were still without power Tuesday morning, officials said. In Oregon, Portland-based Pacific Power said about 36,000 customers had no electricity.

There were three deaths in Washington. A man in Mason County died Monday night in a building hit by a mudslide, another died in Aberdeen when a tree fell on him, and the third died in Montesano when an electrical outage shut off the oxygen equipment he needed, officials said.

A 90-year-old woman in Oregon's Tillamook County died after suffering what a medical examiner called "a weather-related heart attack" as she evacuated. In that same coastal county, a truck was swept away by floodwaters, and the driver was reported dead.

There was no rain in the forecast Wednesday for the Pacific Northwest, says CBS News meteorologist George Cullen.

(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)