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Mendenhall Valley residents torn on whether to leave flood zone and property
- Ellie Ruel
- 1 day ago
- 5 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
Evacuations strongly advised by the city; those in the flood zone take different approaches
By Ellie Ruel
Juneau Independent
As the Mendenhall River creeps towards the temporary wall of HESCO barriers, some residents of the 1,900 homes at risk of imminent glacial lake outburst flooding are preparing to leave or ride out the crest. The City and Borough of Juneau asked those in the flood zone to evacuate by 3 p.m. Wednesday.
“We are tremendously confident in the infrastructure that's been put in place through all of our partnerships,” said Ryan O’Shaughnessy, emergency programs manager for the City and Borough of Juneau during a press briefing Wednesday morning. “But in the event of a HESCO failure, folks would only have minutes before the area could be inundated.”
Neighborhoods around Riverside Drive have seen various personal flood mitigation barriers pop up over the last day and a half. Plastic sheeting, plywood and sandbags now surround many garage doors and entrances.
About an hour after the emergency alert that Suicide Basin was releasing went out around 5 p.m. on Tuesday, Adam Zaleski was preparing his Meander Way house for the crest. He said while he hopes the barriers work, the chance of them failing or overtopping isn’t comforting.
“Those are pretty scary odds when you're behind a wall of water coming at you,” he said.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said in a press briefing last Thursday that the chance of the barriers overtopping or failing was 50% last year, and that those chances were similar this year. During a media availability on Friday, the Corps clarified that this year, the chance was closer to 20%.
Zaleski set up an inflatable wrap around his garage and the back of his house. He said he bought them after the 2024 flood when water got into his house.
“It was worse than everyone expected, and water got in our house, and it wasn’t really as bad as some of our neighbors because we’re kind of high up on a hill,” he said. “We had some damage, so we were able to get some insurance money. The barriers that we got with some of that money, just to mitigate having to get 2,500 sandbags.”
The barriers weren’t the only inflatable at Zaleski’s house – he also staged a skeleton on a lobster pool floatie atop his roof.
“I think people like it, and then people get a good laugh at it and stuff to take a picture,” he said.
His family is planning to evacuate and stay with friends downtown, and their vehicles are parked at a church outside the flood zone. Zaleski is planning to stay on Meander Way.
“We have a group chat with some neighbors for if anybody stays,” he said. “Just for keeping an eye on stuff and keeping in touch with each other if we need help.”
Zaleski said the forecasts and images from National Weather Service Juneau are helpful.
“Without the forecast and the cameras and stuff in place, this would be a lot scarier,” he said. “I just really appreciate all the efforts by those people to help keep us safe.”
Jake Waid lives on Center Court and took a similar approach to embracing humor during the flood. Two stone geese sitting in flamingo pool floaties sat on his roof.
“We got our geese,” he said. “That was the most important thing, and then everything else kind of goes from there.”
Waid is planning to sandbag his garage, the lowest point on their property. In 2024, their crawl space flooded, and last year, water approached their yard.
This year, he said he’s optimistic the HESCO barriers will hold, but plans to evacuate.
“I'll feel good about it tomorrow (Thursday), and when it's done and we're dry,” he said.
On Rivercourt Way, Joe Liddle lined up sandbags around his garage. He said he’s confident in the barriers, and plans to evacuate to the emergency shelter at the Floyd Dryden gym with his family.
Their home didn’t flood last year, but water came up from a storm drain in front of the house.
“It's only a few inches,” Liddle said. “But it makes me think that if it does get flooded, it could be through those storm drains.”
On Meander Way, Norman Staton set up pumps around his riverfront home, where he’s lived for 40 years. Staton plans to stay at his home during the flood to manage his pumps and protect his property.
“You live somewhere for 40 years, you just love it,” he said. “I’ve had people ask me ‘Jeez, why don’t you sell your house and go?’ I’m not selling my house, that’s a labor of love.”
Staton has been dealing with severe riverbank erosion since 2017, and spent tens of thousands of dollars on riprap and other mitigation and repairs. He expressed frustration at the length of processes and lack of support
Last year, he said water came under the barriers and got into his crawl space, with the silty floodwater just barely touching the underside of his living room floor. Now, concrete that extends five feet from his back porch encases the bottom portion of his home to prevent water from seeping in.
“My next door neighbor and I, we were running pumps over the side of it, trying to keep the pumps on, and they were standing right about here, and all of a sudden, the stream of water, it was still half of it going that way, but the other half just swooped over and started going under my deck,” he said. “I wanted to go dive down and try to stop it.”
Volunteers from the community helped him pump water back over the barriers, he said.
Staton has plastic and sandbags around his house now, and one of 43 industrial pumps provided by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is staged next door.
He noted the lake stage being below flood stage before the release started Tuesday bodes well.
“I'm feeling better, because we got two tiers (of HESCO barriers),” he said. “They've done a lot of work on it. They’re pretty prepared. I'm getting prepared, more prepared than I was last year.”
On Gee St., Dean Chantry rigged a tarp around a plywood wall surrounding his house that he’s lived in for four decades. He watched water run down the street in 2024, and some of his neighbors have had flooding in their houses.
“I got this so that the water will run around there and just disappear down the back,” he explained, since his backyard is lower than the front.
He hasn’t had water in his house, but water reached his car and an old lawnmower last year, he said. Chantry’s daughter helped him park his car elsewhere, but he’s staying put during the crest.
“I have two stories here,” he said. “It would have to get pretty deep.”
The Mendenhall River is expected to crest at 15.8-16.3 feet between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. Thursday, according to National Weather Service Juneau.
• Contact Ellie Ruel at ellie.ruel@juneauindependent.com.
