For nearly 13 hours on Thursday Maple Valley firefighters were busy rescuing residents stranded in their homes by flood waters.

Brad Doerflinger, deputy chief for Maple Valley Fire and Life Safety, said firefighters began the day at Southeast 207th and Maple Valley Highway. The first call came in at 5:04 a.m.

“We brought in assistance from Renton’s dive team,” Doerflinger said. “The water was to their door. We brought out six people.”

From there they were dispatched to Byers Road, which is down the street, Doerflinger said.

“We contacted everybody off 216th Street on Byers Road,” he said. “We took one woman out of her house. We ended up taking her to a hotel in Auburn. We made contact with five other families and they all elected to stay.”

Doerflinger said those who chose to stay told firefighters they had heard reports the Cedar River had crested.

“They said, ‘We’ve made it this far, we’ll just ride it out,'” Doerflinger said.

Firefighters left that neighborhood around 2:30 p.m.

“About 4 p.m. we went to the Cedar Grove trailer park,” Doerflinger said. “We went in there with our Polaris, which is a six-wheel-drive vehicle, and brought out two people from the trailer park.”

One of the Cedar Grove residents, Carol Kilkenny, was taken to the American Red Cross shelter at St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church in Renton. Her husband stayed behind to guard their home against possible looting, she said.

Doerflinger said that rescue operations went well and there were no injuries. It was “pretty much business as usual except for a few road closures” Friday, he reported.