KTOO launches new awareness efforts about Suicide Basin filling up as station’s coffers are drained
- Mark Sabbatini
- Jul 19
- 6 min read
Updated: Jul 31
Station offers pre-flood evacuation advice, hosts preparatory BBQ, previews "Outburst" series on same day Congress gives final OK to nixing public broadcasting funds
This story has been corrected to state Claire Stremple, not Alix Soliman, did the voiceover for the preview of the "Outburst" series.
A barbecue by a public broadcasting station while its funding is being slashed that invites guests fearing their homes will be severely flooded — again — during the coming weeks may sound rather bleak.
There was, however, a shared resolve to be as informed and prepared as possible since experts as of Thursday are predicting Aug. 8 as the date Suicide Basin will be full, thus offering a general timeline for when another severe glacial lake outburst flood from the ice dam may occur. Record flooding the past two years damaged more than 300 homes and caused extensive infrastructure damage.
This year a semipermanent levee of HESCO barriers is in place along the Mendenhall River where it passes many of the most vulnerable neighborhoods. Officials are also relying on past experience to offer recommendations this year such as residents evacuating homes well before flooding occurs.
KTOO went beyond its customary reporting of such developments by hosting a community barbecue on Thursday night at Riverside Rotary Park, where experts shared advice and supplies such as weather radios were available. The station also previewed a new "Outburst" series — on the same evening Congress gave final approval to a clawback of federal funding that is one-third of KTOO’s operating budget.
However, the station started expanding its outreach and coverage plans months ago with grant funding intended for glacial flood work, said Claire Stremple, the station’s managing editor, in an interview during Thursday’s gathering. She took over the job last November and uses lessons from last year’s flood to prepare for this year.
"I saw that we didn't have a breaking news plan for that flood," she said. "And so one of the first things we started doing as a team and as an organization, was building that plan, and thinking about ways that we could be useful."
Officials offering guidance at Thursday’s barbecue included American Red Cross volunteers who will be operating an emergency evacuation shelter, a state Department of Environmental Conservation official offering preparatory steps for securing fuel tanks and disposing of hazardous materials, and National Weather Service Juneau hydrologist Aaron Jacobs using mapboards to explain glacial floods of the past and possibly future.
Jacobs told a group of people clustered around the maps that, while last year’s flood saw the Mendenhall River crest at a water level at 16 feet, the HESCO barriers should keep neighborhoods safe even at 18 feet — and to reach that would require a rapid release of water from the dam as well as "a 200-year rainfall event happening."
"So that's a 0.1% or 0.2% chance of that happening on top of a very large-volume outburst flood on top of it," he said.
The barriers have been controversial among some living in neighborhoods where they’re installed and Jacobs was asked by a barbecue guest about the risk of a breach. He said officials this year are factoring the possibility into their assessment and response plans.
"The people who did the work for the flood inundation maps, they also are doing a breach analysis," he said. "So they're going to be giving that to the city to find out what areas would be the highest risk for any breaches, and then we're going to be monitoring those areas and making sure that they don't breach. And if they do, or if there's any signs of that, we are ready to make sure that the community is alerted. We would issue a flash flood warning if that takes place, and you would get an alarm on your phone saying ‘get out of the evacuation area, go to high ground immediately.’"
The Weather Service’s most recent update on Thursday at the Suicide Basin monitoring website puts the water level at about 1,283 feet, compared to 1,308 feet on July 17 of last year and 1,362 feet in 2023.
"Water levels have risen about 36 feet in the last week, mainly due to the heavy rain from July 11-13," the update notes. "The elevation of the overflow channel at the top of the ice dam is 1371 feet, that would put the current levels roughly 88 feet below this spillway. If the rate of rise in the basin remains around the average of 4 feet per/day, this would result in a full basin in 22 days, or around August 8th. "
Ellen Pavitt, a Red Cross volunteer who lives in an area at risk of flooding, said she’s planning to follow the city’s advice of being ready ahead of time to evacuate her home if a flood is imminent. Last year Suicide Basin broke at about 10:11 a.m. Aug. 4, and flooding reached major-level status the night of Aug. 5 and peaked during the early morning hours of Aug. 6.
"The good thing about a flood as opposed to an earthquake — I grew up in California — is you have some warning," she said. "And I don't know what's going to happen — I don't know if we're going get flooded or not — but I don't want to be there trying to evacuate with the rest of the neighborhood."
Pavitt said she was camping when last year’s flood occurred and thus wasn’t directly impacted at home, but when she returned tried to help neighbors through actions such as watching kids and baking cookies. This year she said she’s seeking to do more by signing up to volunteer at the Red Cross’ emergency shelter that will be at the former Floyd Dryden Middle School.
"I have done the training to help out at the shelter and I was a professional social worker," she said. "I'm retired now, so I'm going to be kind of a shoulder to lean on at the shelter."
An emergency shelter was also set up at the school last year, but people staffing it were caught off guard in the early morning hours of Aug. 6 when the flood spread to a far wider area than predicted and resulted in dozens of people showing up in a short time span. This year Red Cross officials say they’re ready for such contingencies.
A stepped-up effort on a larger scale is also planned cooperatively by city and tribal government officials, said Sabrina Grubitz, public safety manager for the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. The tribe’s Emergency Operations Center provided more than 5,000 pounds of food and 40,000 pounds in other goods to more than 380 households affected by the flood last year, and Grubitz said this year "joint unified command" with the city is planned.
"We want to let the subject matter experts carry out their activities," she said. "Last year had its own set of challenges and different things that were proposed forward. And this year, in talking with Red Cross ahead of time, we have the luxury of knowing that this (shelter) is a service that's going to be able to be provided. And so I think that that's why we've decided to go in this direction — it makes sense."
Stremple said that in addition to KTOO’s planned broadcast and online news coverage of events leading up to, during and in the aftermath of a glacial flood, special programming and further events are planned. Previewed at Thursday’s gathering was the "Outburst" series, which Stemple described in a voiceover as "the story of how a freezing cold disaster has escalated faster than human imagination and public policies to protect people."
"Hundreds of people in Juneau’s Mendenhall Valley are living on the front line of a climate change disaster they didn’t see coming," Soliman’s preview recording notes.
This year the hope expressed by some emergency response officials is the HESCO barriers will prevent another disaster from happening and the elevated preparations will lessen the impacts if a serious incident occurs. Stremple told those gathered at the barbecue that while the clawback of federal funds means KTOO is facing "incredibly challenging decisions in the weeks ahead to navigate these waters," she’s also working to make sure there’s full focus on keeping the community current on the flood situation under any scenario.
"I'd like to say that for tonight we're whole and we're doing our best to keep you connected to the news you need to be safe, to be informed, and to be a community," she said.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at editor@juneauindependent.com or (907) 957-2306.
