Juneau’s new approaches to avalanche risks get sliding-scale grade from officials, residents
- Mark Sabbatini
- 7 days ago
- 5 min read
Implementing new assessment and alert methods during record storms meant challenges, city officials say; some residents in evacuation zones seek better sharing of information
By Mark Sabbatini
Juneau Independent
Brenda Krauss says she’s hoping there’s less of a “fear factor” among her neighbors when the next snowpocalypse hits.
The downtown resident was among hundreds given a multiday evacuation advisory last month by the city because her neighborhood was in an official avalanche slide path. Officials hosting a community meeting Monday to get feedback on the city’s handling of the storms, which included taking new approaches to some of its avalanche monitoring and warnings, and got mixed reviews from her and others affected.
Krauss said the evacuation notices were particularly difficult for older neighbors, some of whom were physically and/or economically limited, and asked if it's possible for the city to be more judicious with its risk assessments.
“I'm now in the new (risk) zone, which absolutely never in 100 years, never anything's come down to where I am because I'm protected by a big strand of trees,” she said. “So I guess what I'd like to see is less fear factor — especially for the elderly, or more assistance for the elderly to discern — because there are areas within those homes that are very low risk.”
Krauss said she understands city officials were trying to minimize liabilities, but questioned if the city was overly cautious in its advisories given the historical impacts of avalanches and the snow conditions under which they occurred.
Ryan O'Shaughnessy, who took over as the city’s emergency programs manager last year, said “we absolutely were erring on the side of caution” during the evacuation advisory issued Jan. 9.
“Going into this event there's a couple reasons that we chose to go with the full ‘severe,’ and not step that up from ‘moderate’ to ‘severe,’” he said. “Fiirst, we had a really unusual start to the year. We had a cold snap through December and then we got a great big dump of snow. And so that was an unusual start to the year which to the avalanche community could have created a weak layer, but we didn't know that at the time.”
Also, O’Shaughnessy said, the city’s newly hired avalanche advisor, John Bressette, didn’t start until January — after several feet of record snowfall in December had already occurred — so his expertise was unavailable during the early stages of the city’s response.
Bressette, responding to questions about the city’s level of caution, said numerous avalanches occurred during the storms and highlighted one near-miss in a neighborhood as an example of why historical trends aren’t entirely reliable.
“It was able to put snow very close to houses and it was just a real small pocket of what potentially could have gone,” he said. “Also, in my career I've seen multiple avalanches that have taken out 300-year-old trees in Southeast Alaska. So the fact that there is mature growth or a strand of trees is not necessarily going to keep you safe in a historic event.”
One of the differences in this year’s advisory process is that “in the past we've kind of gone door-to-door (and) knocked on doors,” O’Shaughnessy said. This year the emphasis was on text messages, and the Integrated Public Alert and Warning System (IPAWS) public alert system.
“Some of you guys probably had your phones kind of go off like a siren,” he said. “It can be pretty jarring, but that's the intent of that. That tool is to really get folks’ attention.”
One change the city made that got an unfavorable response from some people at the meeting was switching from a traditional five-level avalanche risk standard (1-low, 5-very high) to a three-tiered “ready, set, go” rating. O’Shaughnessy said the five-point system measures the probability of an avalanche, while the new system is intended to more clearly tell residents what to do.
Deb Spencer was among the residents who said she wants the more familiar five-level system to return.
“What I do miss is that regular daily report so I can track the conditions, the weather and what's happening,” she said. “I understand it's a backcountry scale that was used, but it does feel like it helps me assess my own risk.”
Further discussion of conditions is available at the city’s avalanche advisory page, O’Shaughnessy said.
Jennifer Pemberton said a frustration for her was wanting to know when she could return home, rather than if she should leave.
“We were already evacuated,” she said. “For me it was just like I'm sitting here waiting to figure out if I can go home or not, and I'm just refreshing the one page over and over, looking for some kind of information about what's happening.”
Also, while the decision to evacuate her home was easy, “I think (it) was really difficult for other people if, like, you have to stay in a hotel,” Pemberton said. “Centennial Hall was not an option for a lot of people. I think it's not ideal for families. It's not ideal for so many people.”
That led to a lot of disputes among residents in her neighborhood about what to do during the advisory, Pemberton said.
“The messaging was clear, but I think the calculation was really hard for a lot of people,” she said. “So I was talking to a lot of my neighbors and everybody was having difficult conversations, and with their partners and with their spouse, and people were landing on different sides of that and kind of arguing about what they were going to do, and if people were being cavalier about it or not.”
O’Shaughnessy acknowledged using new approaches during extreme weather was a less-than-ideal situation.
“We totally did change up how we communicate that risk and then got a record-breaking snowfall, which is totally not ideal, and I'll own that,” he said. “And we moved away from the one through five system. I think we had good reasons for doing that, and we stand behind that, but I do wish that we’d had more time.”
City and state officials tracked avalanches and snow stability conditions using drones and helicopters when weather permitted, generally allowing timely assessments and updates of risk conditions, Bressette said. Monitoring efforts got a boost when a radar system known as an Avymonster pointing at Mount Juneau was installed last month on Douglas Island.
“What that will allow us to do is see any type of movement from avalanches,” he said. “So even if that happens at night or in severely bad weather where we can't see it we'll be able to detect it.”
Residents raised other concerns about the city’s plowing efforts, uncertainties about parking while street clearing and evacuation advisories were taking place, and if protective measures like barriers on slopes might be worthy of consideration.
Lennon Weller, who said he chose not to vacate his home during the advisory, asked if the city officials — as part of their looking at their handling of the storm in hindsight — would consider putting more focus on “the narrative of the storm relative to more technical metrics on the ground of what was going on on specific slopes.”
“You're trying to be really cautious, but I would hope going forward there can be a little bit more specificity, at least for those of us that are looking for more specific analysis about a specific storm (and) more specific risk factor, especially the maps being as broad as they are,” he said.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
