Mendenhall Valley residents in the flood zone celebrated Thursday afternoon as the Mendenhall River crested at a level well below initial predictions. The event was much less destructive than disastrous floods that struck over the past three years.
The flood crested at 14.7 feet on the Mendenhall Lake gauge at 2:15 p.m., according to the National Weather Service. As floodwaters started to recede Thursday afternoon, only a handful of residents reported damage.
“We have crested officially, and we are now on the way back down — we did it, Juneau,” said Zoe Kaplan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, during a livestream just before 3 p.m.
Ann Lind lives in the flood zone on Marion Drive. She said she had been anxiously waiting for the flood all spring and summer. Last year, her home flooded when drainage pipes failed and water leaked through the floodwall.
“For months it was like this slow-moving bullet coming straight at me, and didn’t know if it was going to be a hit or a miss,” she said. “And today, it’s a miss.”
Lind said the water didn’t even touch the HESCO barriers that make up the flood wall in her backyard.
“This flood this year is the scenario we all wanted — we all hoped for,” she said.
A couple of riverfront homeowners on Killewich Drive said their crawl spaces flooded this year due to seepage, but they were able to pump out the water.
View Drive residents saw the worst flooding, as they have every year. This is the second year in a row they were left without the protection of the flood wall constructed by the City and Borough of Juneau and the Army Corps.
Mandy Mallott lives at the end of the street. Last year, she and her neighbors set up their own flood wall made of HESCO barriers and an earthen berm in an attempt to protect their homes. She said her home was spared, but there was still a lot of damage throughout the neighborhood.
On Thursday afternoon, she said she and others who put up barriers on the street didn’t see flooding in their homes.
“The emotions that are running through us are a big sense of relief and thankfulness to our friends and our neighbors that we got through the night and this gorgeous day together,” Mallott said.
Malachi Thorington also lives on View Drive, where he said his house and his next-door neighbors’ flooded this year, but not as badly as in the past.
Downstream on Meadow Lane, near Juneau International Airport and the mouth of the river, Bob Jacobson watched the flood from his son’s deck overlooking the river.
He described watching a tree strike the barriers across the river — just minutes before — to two U.S. Army Corps officials who had just arrived at the barrier.
Within minutes, Army Corps crews chainsawed the log away from the barrier. Pumps were stationed along Meadow Lane but did not need to be turned on as the flood peaked.
The HESCO barriers below Brotherhood Bridge are new. There was some seepage, but neighbors said it was nothing compared to last year when water rose up the bank and into yards and some driveways, just feet from homes.
Jeff Garmon is the meteorologist in charge at the Weather Service in Juneau, and he lives on Meander Way — a street that’s been hit hard by flooding in the past. As the flood peaked, he had minor pooling in his backyard, which was piped back over the HESCO flood wall by pumps provided by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
“We’re fortunate this year we didn’t have an atmospheric river going into this,” Garmon said. “I think that was our saving grace.”
Garmon said he’s proud of how the city, Army Corps, U.S. Geological Survey, University of Alaska Southeast researchers, the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, flood advocacy groups and countless others worked collaboratively to support residents in the flood zone.
“It’s something Juneau should be proud of — that as a community we came together,” he said.
