FAIRFIELD - The only indication that Tom and Elizabeth Moffat's living room used to be under four feet of water is a panel of unpainted drywall in the corner and some unfinished molding around a window.

The newly built homes on Monte Vista Court off Rockville Road offer eight more reminders of the devastating flooding on Dec. 31, 2005. Close to the anniversary of the storm, many flood victims said they are finally starting to get things back to normal.

'It was a catastrophe,' said Linda Mahoney, director of the emergency homeless shelter Heather House, which suffered $60,000 of damage and was partially closed for 10 months. 'We could have just said 'This is too hard' after that. But because it is so important . . . we did whatever we had to do to make it work.'

John Bustos returned to his rebuilt duplex across the street from the Moffats in November after spending 10 months bouncing between hotels and friends' homes. A few of his neighbors have also returned, but many others found homes elsewhere in the interim.

Now that people are back, Bustos said the neighborhood planned a get-together on Sunday night, a year to the day after the floods started.

Bustos remembered leaving for work in the early morning on New Year's Eve 2005. It was raining, he recalled, but nothing seemed awry. Less than three hours later, he and his fiancee were wading past his submerged car in the front yard.

'Basically, we had no time to do anything,' he said. 'We grabbed the cat and some paperwork and got out of there.'

Mahoney's voice cracked as she talked about getting a 6 a.m. phone call about water coming in to the shelter. Volunteers and clients at the shelter filled sandbags at the shelter and nearby apartments for 13 hours before it became clear it was a losing effort.

Tom Moffat tried to stay and protect his house for a while, but said he eventually had to get out on an aluminum boat.

After spending three months in hotels, the Moffat family in April fixed up a couple of rooms of their rented house and moved back in. They've been working on the remainder of the house since, and are nearly done.

'It's tough to try and get back on an even road again,' Tom Moffat said. 'It took a lot to put the house back together.'

Faced with a half-million dollars in flood damage, officials at the Napa-Solano Girl Scout headquarters decided against putting their own house back together. Having been flooded five times in 20 years by Suisun Creek, the scouts left their location on Cordelia Road and moved north to a spot near Solano Community College.

'We lost our entire program center to the flood,' said Caila Menefee, fund development and communications director for the scouts. 'We lost . . . basically everything.'

As if the floodwaters weren't enough, vandals trashed the remnants of the headquarters in the days after the flood. Police later arrested and charged two teenagers with the crime.

Nevertheless, Menefee praised the Fairfield businesses that helped during the recovery and noted the Napa-Solano Girl Scouts are now enjoying their highest membership ever.

'The community rallied to support us in ways that astonished us,' she said.

Farther up Ledgewood Creek, the long driveway to Dare and Lisa Delorefice's house is still pitted and battered from sheets of water flowing across it. They spent a few months cleaning a layer of silt from some of their outbuildings, but know they fared pretty well.

The rare confluence of factors that led to the flooding late releases from Lake Curry, Suisun Creek jumping its bank and once-in-a-century rains gives Dare Delorefice a measure of confidence about continuing to live next to the creek.

'I say my prayers at night and I cross my fingers (but) we've never seen one like that before,' he said. 'That storm was an exceptional storm. Hopefully we'll go another 100 years without one.'

Bustos said more or less the same thing, although he mostly blamed the barriers between Interstate 80 and the end of his street for causing the water to back up.

The barriers were partially responsible for the pounding that flooded out Bustos and the Moffats, but the real culprit was the size of the storm, city Public Works Director Gene Cortwright said.

Fairfield is talking with the state Department of Transportation about the drainage problem there, Cortwright said.

City contractors recently finished cleaning out two storm drain systems that had been clogged with silt since the floods. They also did their normal clearing of plants and debris in the channels. But even with the drains working again, Cortwright said a similar storm would have similar results.

'With that amount of rain and water coming downstream you can only handle so much and at some point you will overtax your system,' he said. 'There's only so much we can do.'

The fear of another flood was almost enough to drive the Moffats away. Tom Moffat said some may consider them crazy for staying, but said they were drawn back to the tight-knit community of homes.

'If it rains that much again we'll flood,' he said. 'I'll just throw my hands up and walk away.'

Reach Ben Antonius at 427-6977 or bantonius@dailyrepublic.net.