Juneau’s storm evacuations prompt Haines, Klukwan to reflect on readiness
- Chilkat Valley News
- Jan 30
- 4 min read
By Will Steinfeld
Chilkat Valley News
Earlier this month, the city of Juneau issued official warnings advising hundreds of residents to evacuate their homes due to avalanche risk following heavy snowfall.
Over 50 residents evacuated to one downtown emergency shelter, Juneau’s KTOO reported, and Juneau emergency manager Ryan O’Shaughnessy said the city only made the evacuation call after intense deliberation.
“We’re asking people to leave their homes,” O’Shaughnessy said. “It’s a big deal.”
While Juneau residents evacuated, the Chilkat Valley saw a number of avalanches, but none that directly threatened homes. Melting and rain brought some flooding and concern of elevated slide risk, but the region emerged without widespread property damage or personal danger.
That mostly-positive outcome, however, wasn’t always certain. In the borough office, manager Alekka Fullerton said she put the borough’s emergency operations center on alert during the storm, and would’ve activated the group had snowfall or rain been heavier, or continued for longer.
Had that happened, how might the Chilkat Valley have handled a more serious emergency response, like the one in Juneau?
Haines
As it turns out, there isn’t any non-subjective way to make an emergency decision like an evacuation. At least in the borough’s procedures.
The Haines Borough government last advised residents to evacuate during the December 2020 rainstorm that caused the Beach Road landslide.
That decision was based on what information was available in the moment, including observations about flowing water from residents, then-mayor Doug Olerud said.
“The hardest thing is you have people that want the evacuation, and you have people that want to stay in their homes,” Olerud said.
O’Shaughnessy said that was true of the recent Juneau evacuation. Even with the capital city’s much larger city and borough government, there are simply no hard thresholds written into emergency procedures to trigger an evacuation call — meaning it’s always a matter of judgment.
“We wrestle with that question, of navigating a grey area,” O’Shaughnessy said.
In Haines, that’s true of both an evacuation call, and also the smaller decisions, like deciding whether to activate the borough’s emergency operations center.
Fullerton this week listed a number of factors that go into her decision making.
“I’m thinking of topography, I’m looking at weather reports, I’m looking at how many people live there, I’m thinking about what kind of neighborhood it is,” Fullerton said.
For instance, Fullerton said the Young Road neighborhood might have a lower bar for evacuation because there’s only one way in or out of the area.
But largely, Fullerton said, her decision making about what constitutes an emergency, and when to set emergency plans into motion, would lean heavily on outside expertise.
During the recent winter storms, Fullerton said she was in regular communication with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the state emergency operations center, nearby borough administrations, and the state Department of Transportation.
That gave Fullerton meteorological and emergency management expertise beyond what is directly available in the borough administration building.
That’s a similar story to Juneau, where O’Shaughnessy said the city acted on data from state agencies, the National Weather Service and private-sector avalanche monitoring.
But still, if push came to shove, the final call remains with the borough manager, according to the borough’s emergency operations plan. In that plan, the official guidelines are for the manager to order evacuations “whenever necessary to protect lives and property.”
If residents were to evacuate, fire chief Zak Overmyer said the borough has a number of emergency shelter options, and has emergency supplies like cots on hand that were purchased during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Klukwan
Like the borough, the Chilkat Indian Village has also ramped up emergency planning since the December 2020 storms.
Part of the work has been longer-range climate resilience planning, including partnering with scientists at the Kutí project to study slide risk around the debris chute above Klukwan.
Like other nearby governments, Chilkat Indian Village doesn’t have a procedure that tells decision makers exactly when they should advise residents to evacuate their homes, or stay off the roads. But the tribal administration has also been building capacity to inform those in-the-moment emergency decisions, and the subsequent response, said Chilkat Indian Village tribal liaison Shawna Hotch.
Some tribal staff are currently receiving incident command system and national incident management system training from FEMA — the type of trainings some Haines Borough emergency staff and volunteers went through following the 2020 slide. And the tribal government last year was awarded a grant to develop an official hazard mitigation plan, which is required for a government to receive some types of FEMA relief funding.
The tribe has also gotten help from Tlingit and Haida’s Division of Public Safety in developing a small community emergency response plan.
Hotch said the tribal administration also leans on the same types of outside expertise as the Haines Borough, such as warnings from the National Weather Service. A National Weather Service station in Klukwan is currently being finalized.
She also emphasized that warnings and plans are only effective with deeper community planning.
“We’re not just doing it by ourselves, and I think that’s what makes a plan successful. When the community is informed, it can be acted on. Otherwise it’s just a document that just sits somewhere.”
Those efforts include gathering knowledge from elders about when slides have come down, and where, but also educating residents about their options in an emergency, and how to be prepared.
Hotch cited recent examples, one being a flyer distributed by the tribe on social media with advice on what drivers should do if trapped in an avalanche, and what supplies to stash in cars. Another was communication with the Four Winds Resource Center — the non-profit at the old Mosquito Lake School — for shelter and food.
When residents were trapped out the road and needed a place to sleep, or were unable to get to a grocery store, Hotch said tribal staff were able to direct them to the food bank and available cots at the Mosquito Lake School.
“I’ve been extremely thankful for the partnership building the past couple of years, seeing how many in the Chilkat Valley are willing to step up and respond,” Hotch said. “How many recognize the need to rally together and not just come up with plans in a silo.”
• This article originally appeared in the Chilkat Valley News.
