Southeast Alaska tribe continues hands-on response to glacial flooding

A flooded house is pictured in Juneau, Alaska. (Photo courtesy of National Weather Service)

A Southeast Alaska tribe is continuing to respond to a glacial outburst that flooded some 290 homes in Juneau. Early estimates show around 14.6 billion gallons of water were released from an ice dam on the Mendenhall Glacier. That’s according to Aaron Jacobs, a senior service hydrologist at the National Weather Service office in Juneau. The Mendenhall River gauge crested at 15.99 feet at 3:15 a.m. on Aug 6.

The National Weather Service had issued alerts two days before about the likelihood of major flooding from a glacial dam outburst. It had happened before. In 2023, two houses were demolished when erosion undermined their foundations, and flooding to a lesser degree also occurred in other years. So, many homeowners took precautions. They piled up sandbags and lifted things off their basement floors.

However, the flooding was deeper and more widespread than expected. As many as 500 tribal citizens live in the flood zone, but a door-to-door check showed not all were impacted, said Chalyee Éesh Richard Peterson, who is Tlingit and Haida, and heads the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.

“It’s devastating to see what people are going through and then to hear people had minutes to respond in some cases, depending on where they were located. Hearing the story of just, ‘I was just trying to get my kids out.’ That’s all they thought. And then they lost their family dog and their other animals and it’s devastating, but they got their kids out,” he said in a Facebook video posted by the council.

Robbert Holland, age 9, said in the video, “I was nervous, but I just went for it to save my life.”

Peterson said the council and the Tlingit-Haida Regional Housing Authority set up an emergency operations center within hours of the flood’s peak.

Sabrina Grubitz, Tlingit, is incident commander for the tribe. “The first phase is dewatering and getting the debris out of the homes in order to dewater the homes. We were not able to move into a second phase with standing water in those houses,” she said in an Instagram post .

Next comes removal of hazardous materials such as refrigerators, dishwashers, washers, and dryers that are no longer working, and then removal of drywall and insulation.

“By removing those, we’re ensuring that mold will not be growing in those homes in the next few days. And then our phase three is moving into sanitization, so we wanted to ensure that we were able to put together sanitization kits consisting of Simple Green, Clorox, gloves, masks, anything that someone who’s done a self demolition of removing drywall and installation in their home would need to spray on afterwards and use so that they can ensure that the mold’s not going to grow back and have later health concerns,” Grubitz said.

The tribe has 65 staff in the field working closely with 20 National Guard assigned to them to assist. It has issued an emergency declaration, which will help it access resources. Next steps include the tribe helping tribal citizens connect with other services to rebuild as needed.

Jacobs said scientists need to continue to improve their understanding of complex glacial systems, especially as the climate continues to change and warm throughout Alaska.

ICT originally published this article . ICT is an an independent, nonprofit, multimedia news enterprise. ICT covers Indigenous peoples.

Correction: Two houses were demolished after the 2023 flooding, not condo buildings.

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