I first read about this on our Lights and Sirens blog. While KING-TV news was broadcasting live from a bank in Auburn, someone robbed it.

Kenneth Shepherd and Rita Trotman had packed up their fifth-wheel trailer. Overnight bags sat atop their table at Rainier Manor, a mobile-home community for seniors in Sumner.

Now, Shepherd said, they’re just going to wait and see.

The Puyallup River is expected to crest at 4 a.m. Tuesday, and that might send floodwaters spilling into the park. The fire department circulated voluntary evacuation notices Monday afternoon. By 5 p.m., the park appeared mostly empty.

If they have to leave, Shepherd said, he and Trotman will camp overnight in the parking lot of the nearby Fred Meyer. If they’re out longer than that, they have relatives in the area with whom they can stay.

“I hope this is a missed call or something,” Shepherd said. “We’re going to stay until they tell us to get out.”

Kevin Johnson wasn’t taking any chances with his 67-year-old mother, Judy. He was helping her get ready to go with him to his house in Bonney Lake on Monday afternoon. The park flooded a year ago, and his mother’s trailer took about three feet of water – and it’s built up several feet off the street.

“We’re not taking any chances,” he said. “We’re just going to play it safe.”

I talked to residents at the Rainier Manor mobile-home park for seniors in Sumner. Firefighters served them with a voluntary evacuation order this afternoon. Check back in a few minutes for an update.

Louis Grant and Kristian Holle stood by the side of 14th Street Southwest in Puyallup and watched state workers trying to drain their flooded roadway. They both spent most of Monday working to hold off the encroaching waters.

“Ever since I moved out here, my backyard floods,” Grant said. “So it’s screwed right now.”

Grant also said he’s never seen his front yard so flooded. And the situation wasn’t made any better when he discovered his water pump had burned out since last winter.

Holle, who lives across the street, heard water under his house at 2:30 a.m. After sending his family away, he began sandbagging around his property. He hadn’t slept by Monday afternoon.

The sandbags worked, he said: The water stopped about an inch from reaching his home. He blames the flooding on overdevelopment and poor infrastructure.

“The storm drain was spitting water instead of sucking it in,” he said. “This is ridiculous.”

Dave Davis has lived in the 1200 block of 14th Street Southwest in Puyallup for the past 18 years, and he said flooding has been getting “steadily worse” for a decade.

There are several reasons for this, he says. New developments at higher elevations make runoff greater. Flood drains are inadequate and deteriorating. And the city’s decision to raise the street four inches this summer didn’t help.

He’s been telling members of the city government and has largely been ignored.

“The city has known about this problem for ages,” he said. “… It’s not been well-maintained over the years.”

His wife and he have organized the neighborhood and hope a stronger voice mean change can happen. After all, he said, the city seems to have money for other projects.

“They can buy a new city hall,” he said. “They can pay for new roads elsewhere. But they can’t put one dime into fixing our problem.”

John Burrell waded through his front yard in the 1200 block of 14th Street Southwest in Puyallup in nearly waist-deep floodwaters while trying to clean up from Monday’s storms.

Some of the floodwater, he said, was still standing in the garage. He said the design of the neighborhood means his house takes on a disproportionately high amount of runoff.

“There’s nothing we could do to stop it,” he said. “We take on all the block’s water.”

Elizabeth and Claire Kerns are used to a little bit of flooding at their home in the 1200 block of 14th Street Southwest in Puyallup, but they say it’s getting worse each year. Construction work to raise the road last summer didn’t help either, they said.

“We’ve never had water this high before,” said Elizabeth, who has lived in her home for 10 years. “This is a big, big problem.”

The Kerns’ garage had three feet of standing water in it, said Claire, Elizabeth’s daughter. That meant their washer, dryer, exercise machine and water heater are almost certainly damaged and likely destroyed.

Their front yard was also flooded. They placed a two-by-four to serve as a walking plank to their porch.

I asked if there was anything else they wanted me to know.

“Yeah,” Elizabeth smiled. “Don’t live in the valley.”

I just finished talking with residents of the 1200 block of 14th Street Southwest in Puyallup. Their street was hit pretty hard with flooding, and I'll bring you their stories in the next few minutes.

An early edition of my Veterans Family Fund story is after the jump:

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It’s winter. It’s raining. That means the garden of Margaret Wang has flooded.

The Orting resident says it happens every winter when there’s a big rain. Often, the water is still standing in May. It's a drainage problem that Wang

“We don’t grow anything in the winter,” she said. “There’s always water there, and nothing would grow there like that.”

But, she said, the yard didn’t flood; indeed, most of Orting seemed to ride out the rains with little flooding. Her husband was doing chores outside and, when asked about the weather, looked around the yard.

"It rained a lot and it didn't really flood," he said. "So what?"

Carl Bohm leaned against a truck parked along 60th Street East in the Sumner Valley and watched a pump blast floodwaters into the street. It seemed like an impossible task: His front yard was inundated, with about a foot to 18 inches of standing water at its highest.

“This is what happens,” he said, “when you get 3 inches in 12 hours’ time and it still keeps coming.”

The water hadn’t reached his house’s interior – it hasn’t in the 15 years he’s lived in the house – but he said the flooding has become worse with recent highway and subdivision development. There’s more water on his side of the street and the city, he said, hasn’t compensated with larger storm drains.

“But I do have to credit the city engineers,” he said. “They were out here at 6 this morning trying to make sure things didn’t get too bad.”

Another photo is after jump:

=> Read more!

I’m all over flooding in Pierce County today. I’ll be uploading photos and vignettes. I’m first heading to Puyallup.

If you hear of other stuff, gimme a buzz on my cell: 253-320-4758.

I got a lot of great feedback from my Buel Sever story. Lots of war buffs out there. If you haven't checked out the photo/audio slideshow, it's worth checking out.

Today, I'm writing up an advance for the Pierce County kickoff for the Veterans Family Fund certificate of deposit program. It's where investors can deposit money in a six-month CD; half the interest returns to the investor, and the other half goes into a fund to help veterans and their families for unexpected expenses.

And I'll be meeting with Justin Schumacher, who coordinates the Medical Reserve Corps for the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department. I'll have more on that today.