‘Snow, all at once’: Two flooded Douglas homes draw neighborhood effort to divert icy water
- Jasz Garrett
- Jan 12
- 5 min read
More than a dozen people on St. Ann’s Avenue build berm to mitigate ‘slush slide’ releasing from Mount Jumbo
By Jasz Garrett
Juneau Independent
Simon Marks stood in knee-deep water inside his garage on Friday night as he and his neighbors worked together to stop more St. Ann’s Avenue homes from flooding.
St. Ann’s residents described an ice dam that forms up Mount Jumbo, explaining that once pressure is released from warmer temperatures, the water comes down all at once. The river of snow rushed down from 5th Street before reaching St Ann’s in south Douglas, where it ran right through two garages and into Marks’ apartment.
“It was flowing through the whole house,” he said.
Marks said heavy snow from 5th Street piled into a creek and a city culvert above the house, where it backfilled until hard rain fell. When water begins flowing underneath the snow between the culvert and the house, it burrows out.
“Then at some point, all of it just bursts and all comes down at once — big slush slide,” he said.
The snow and slush piled up in the creekway, plugging it, before it caved in the back garage door.
“It hit the garage door so hard it broke the bottom three panels,” Marks said. “And when that happens, it redirects the flow of the creek out from the creek bed, so that the water is just flowing into the garages, and the only place for it to go out is through the apartment on the front of the house.”
It isn’t the first time the flood has happened.
“That flood water comes down, and that snow comes down almost every year, when we get a big, heavy snow and then a heavy rain like this,” Marks said. “So I’ve learned pretty well to keep most of my things up a little higher. This is the second time in three years that the house has gotten water in it.”
He said he was still taking inventory of damages on Sunday. The cleanup process will be extensive, with Marks moving everything out of the apartment. He said he will likely hire a cleaning crew and have someone test for mold.
“The garages are going to have snow and ice in them until, probably, I don't know, May or June,” he said. “The garages we just kind of leave because there’s a foot and a half of slush and ice, and snow in there. Can’t really do all that much about that.”
Marks said the aftermath requires damage control to save the apartment.
He said previous tenants told him the flooding was an issue in the garages – but not the apartment – at least since 2021. The last significant flooding was in February 2024, following Juneau’s “Snowmaggedon,” which broke a January snowfall record.
“That one was really bad. We had almost five, maybe six feet of water in the garages and about two feet in the apartment,” Marks said. “And that time, the entire apartment had to get renovated.”
Juneau broke its December snowfall record in 2025 with a total of 82 inches, according to the National Weather Service in Juneau. Marks said this year, there were two to three feet of slushy water in both garages and four to five inches inside the apartment. He said the apartment was partially dammed to stop the flood.
“We’re trying to just dry it out as much as possible this year and hope that it’s still livable,” he said.
Marks said there’s not a lot he can do to prepare except put some beams and barriers in the garages. He said the City and Borough of Juneau came last summer and worked on the creek, thinking they would be able to mitigate the winter floods. Marks said he would like an engineer and a hydrologist to figure out a better plan “because it’s the city’s responsibility to deal with those culverts.”
He said the flooding keeps happening every year, and he had a feeling it would again with the immense amounts of snow and the thaw.
“We were a little more prepared for it this time and had more people out there digging to get the creek rerouted faster,” he said.
The rerouting effort began at about 9:15 p.m. on Friday and lasted until after 2 a.m. Saturday, according to Marks. One of his neighbors used their front-end loader to help create the wall of snow that redirected the stream. At least an inch of water inundated their St. Ann’s home as well. A video posted on Facebook prompted more neighbors from down the street to chip in.
The neighborhood group dug a trench along the side of the house to stop the water from filling the garages and apartment. The snow berm began at Marks’ driveway where the water was flowing down the side of the house to the culvert on the other side. He said eventually, a channel was dug in the creek to start redirecting the flow out of the garage and back into the creek bed.
Katy Prussing said the neighborhood was careful to keep the street’s storm drains clear in advance of the heavy rain, but there was just too much water.
“It was really a neighborhood effort,” she said. “I just am thankful for all the neighbors.”
She said a city culvert underneath the street was nearly completely frozen and couldn’t properly drain the amount of water gushing through. Prussing said she hoped there would be enough melting to widen the water’s path through the culvert as more rain is expected this week.
“It’s like a big toothpaste tube,” she said. “It’s full and frozen.”
On Saturday, Prussing asked the city for street signs advising against using St. Ann’s until the problem is alleviated. She said overnight Friday, someone drove through and broke their snow berm. This caused water to flow into the garages again, and water was still moving Saturday morning, but did not reach Marks’ apartment.
The neighborhood was again outside Saturday, readjusting the snow enbankments. Marks said on Sunday his place hadn’t flooded since Saturday afternoon.
Another neighbor who helped on Friday, Glenn Wuyts, said it was “snow, all at once.” He and Prussing said the city has tried to mitigate the creek, but more needs to be done. Wuyts said it would be helpful in the future if the city could help clear the culvert ahead of a big melt. He also suggested the fire department could install a pump each year and divert water directly across the street.
“It’s just a lot of anxiety every year,” Wuyts said. “Luckily, there were a lot of people who saw the video on Facebook from down the street. They came and helped shovel and divert the water. So that was very nice to see the neighborhood come together.”
Prussing and Wuyts said other houses had some seepage from the snowmelt, but not the creek.
Marks said he planned to submit a damage report to CBJ on Sunday.
“Clearly, we’re going to have to rethink our approach, because it keeps happening,” he said.
• Contact Jasz Garrett at jasz@juneauindependent.com or (907) 723-9356.
