The relentless water, the long hours, millions of dead fish.

Jill Phillips will likely never forget the fight to save more than 1.5 million Chinook salmon fry when the January flood came to the Voights Creek Hatchery.

Phillips, the hatchery manager, and her two crew members worked up to 17 hours a day in the incubation room in cold waist-deep water. They needed to keep water from the creek flowing through more than 600 trays full of newly hatched salmon.

Each tray had to be emptied of silt, over and over again.

�We kept up with it,� Phillips recalled. �Then we lost the water.�

Sediment and gravel clogged the huge pump and gravity line that bring water from Voights Creek. Both quit working and without running water, the Chinook fry quickly suffocated.

Another 1.2 million coho salmon eggs were not yet hatched. They included 100,000 eggs from the Puyallup Tribe. Unlike the Chinook fry, the eggs could last perhaps 24 hours if kept dry.

When the pump quit, the crew quickly emptied the trays and evacuated the building.

Phillips said they managed to save 450,000 coho eggs. They were transferred to the spring-fed Puyallup River trout hatchery in Puyallup, which Phillips also manages.

The young coho will be returned to the Voights Creek Hatchery in October and then be released next April.

That�s good news to Phillips.

�You are here because you love the resource,� she said. �Once you take those eggs it�s your responsibility. It�s almost like being a parent. ...They are under your care and guidance.�

Remembering the flooding remains hard, she said.

�We saw fish in the puddles,� she said.