Kitsap County’s Board of Commissioners signed a declaration of emergency to help departments work together to fight the storm that drenched South Kitsap’s houses, roads and businesses and increased the risk of landslides.

“Our resources have been overwhelmed,” said Susan May, a public information officer for Kitsap County’s Department of Emergency Management.

“We don’t have enough stuff or enough people to do what we need to do, so this opens up other options. We’re slowly getting information about road damages, but it’s not over yet.”

The majority of calls reporting basement floods have come from Bremerton, but most of the road damage happened in South Kitsap, said May.

“This storm wasn’t as bad as the 2007 storm, but it was close” said Mark Dorsey, Port Orchard’s public works director.

“Our biggest issue is that we had a fairly high tide on Sunday along with a fairly heavy rain.”

The rain alone caused the National Weather Service to issue a “Special Weather Statement” for the area.

“Heavy rains, of two to five inches over the Western Washington Lowlands and up to 10 inches in the mountains, have increased soil wetness to high levels,” according to the National Weather Service. “This amount of rain has resulted in soil instability and an increased risk of landslides.”

And, crews throughout the area are already working to cleanup the damage the storm’s already caused.

The rain knocked out a bridge on Hunter Road, temporarily disconnecting approximately 100 people with the only paved entrance and exit point from their neighborhood.

“Being disconnected with the rest of the world is kind of surreal,” said Jeff Larson, who stood near the road and watched crews repair the bridge.

His 13-year-old son, AJ Larson, was just thankful that he got to miss school, since buses couldn’t get to his house.

But that shouldn’t last long.

Construction crews plan to “work around the clock” on fixing the damage until the road opens up again, said Dave Marquis, an employee at Kitsap County Utilities and Public Works.

The road will probably be usable by Thursday or Friday, said Marquis, although people with four-wheel-drive vehicles can now get out of the neighborhood through a private, dirt logging road at the Alpine Evergreen Company.

“All this traffic and water it’s roughing up the road,” said Ryan Sandstrom, a manager at the tree farm. “We’re just doing the best we can to get the water off of it.”

In downtown Port Orchard, A mixture of high tides and heavy rains washed into the city near Kitsap Bank’s main branch.

The bank, which sits on a hill, weathered the storm without any damage.

But the showroom for About Floors, Inc., at the bottom of a small hill across the street, flooded with about two to three inches of water.

“We didn’t lose too much,” said Kathryn Elhardt, the company’s Senior Vice President. “Mainly samples.”

The store sustained much greater losses in a 2007 flood.

“Compared with 2007, this was a cakewalk,” said Elhardt.

This flood caused less damage, because it involved less water, said Elhardt.

The city took measures to protect the store, like re-working nearby drainage grates, to try to protect the store from flooding.

But Elhardt doubts it did a tremendous amount of good.

“When the tides come up, there’s not much you can do about it,” she said.