Juneau residents hit by glacial flood scramble to drain homes and clean up

JUNEAU — Linda Perry was devastated on Wednesday. Torrents of floodwater from the Mendenhall River had rushed into her house early Tuesday morning. She safely evacuated, but her home was significantly damaged. By Wednesday afternoon, Perry’s ruined carpet had been torn out. Family photographs lay out on tarps in the sun.

“Honestly, I don’t really know how I’m gonna make it. I don’t — I can’t afford this. No insurance. My only revenue is if there’s disaster funds,” she said.

Similar experiences were shared by dozens of homeowners on several streets in the densely populated Mendenhall Valley, where the bulk of Juneau residents live. Record-breaking flooding of the Mendenhall River was caused by a basin off to the side of the glacier that emptied Tuesday morning, rapidly inundating dozens of homes and other dwellings.

No deaths and or injuries were reported, but the extent of the property damage from the flooding was becoming clearer Wednesday.

Robert Barr, deputy Juneau city manager, said Wednesday afternoon that local officials were still counting how many homes had been inundated, but the best estimate was more than 100. Officials from the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida said 120 tribal citizens had been severely affected by the flooding.

Front and backyards on heavily affected streets were strewn with the contents of homes. Carpets, insulation and drywall destroyed by the flood were headed to the dump. Precious mementos dried in the sun.

The City and Borough of Juneau is organizing collection of debris and waste. Gary and Karen Kostenko couldn’t wait. Their garage flooded and their yard was filled with waterlogged stuff they didn’t need.

[‘It happened so fast’: Speed and scale of Juneau flooding caught residents by surprise]

Abraham and Aiona Fisi, owners of Southeast Junk Removal & Demolition, arrived at the Kostenko home Wednesday morning to start hauling away trash. They have had dozens of flood-impacted residents calling to remove junk.

“We’re barely even making a dent,” Aiona Fisi said, looking at neighboring yards filled with flotsam.

On a nearby street, U.S. Coast Guardsmen fried burgers on a grill to feed people cleaning their homes. Churches and tribal groups delivered food and water on Wednesday. Several exhausted and frayed homeowners said they couldn’t remember what day it was.

Jacqueline Pata, first vice president of Tlingit and Haida, said the Juneau tribe was giving out food and water because people were forgetting to take care of themselves as they worked frantically. Some needed emotional support, she said.

“It’s a crisis that people are dealing with and we want to take care of them,” she said, adding that there was another time pressure concerning officials.

”With school coming next week, we’re a little nervous about how are these families going to be ready for that?” Pata said.

The city’s emergency shelter at nearby Floyd Dryden Middle School had closed as of Wednesday, Juneau officials said. Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall was open downtown for people who needed to shelter or just to take a break — maybe somewhere to drop off the kids as they cleaned up, Pata said.

The flood water receded rapidly Tuesday morning, leaving most streets dry in unusually sunny Juneau weather. Homeowners scrambled to dry their possessions and drain flood water from their homes before rain that was forecasted for Friday evening.

Martha Quinn, who has lived in her Mendenhall Valley home for 23 years, was circumspect Tuesday evening. Her floors will have to be ripped out, and her house has drywall damage. She said neighbors and friends have been “incredible” helping out.

“All the suffering that there is of such greater magnitude around the world, this is a drop in the bucket,” she said philosophically.

By Wednesday afternoon, standing water remained in basements and crawl spaces in houses in some of the hardest hit neighborhoods. Barr said Wednesday that there was a need to drain water and remove waterlogged drywall quickly to avoid structural damage.

Last year, the Mendenhall River flooded at then-record levels, washing away two homes into the river. A year later to the day, the 2024 flood hit after the Suicide Basin ice dam burst.

Paul Converse spent Tuesday pulling flood-damaged carpet out of his home. On Wednesday morning, he was preparing to remove sodden sheetrock and insulation. Like many Mendenhall Valley residents, he was surprised by the speed and the scale of the flooding in neighborhoods that hadn’t flooded before.

”It was stunning to me that last year my lot was dry, then this year I had four feet of moving water,” he said.

Tuesday’s flooding was historic, raising the Mendenhall River to a record level of 15.99 feet, according to the National Weather Service. The weather service maintains an interactive map that shows which Mendenhall Valley neighborhoods can expect to be inundated at different flood levels.

Barr suggested the mapping system and communication with residents could be improved. He described the map as “kind of cumbersome,” and he said that it “isn’t really comprehensible to a lay person.”

“Because the maps are good, the technology is good, the data is good, the science is good — it’s just public communication and getting the right information in front of the right people at the time that they need it,” he said.

Murkowski and Dunleavy tour the damage

Gov. Mike Dunleavy and U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski joined local Juneau officials to tour some of the worst-hit neighborhoods on Wednesday. At Janet Coffin’s house, the subterranean crawl space was still full of water by the early afternoon. A sump pump ran to drain water onto the road.

Dunleavy and Murkowski toured the Juneau flood damage a year ago. They were back on Wednesday, surveying more widespread damage from the same flooding phenomenon.

“I don’t want to come back and visit you every August 6 or 7,” Murkowski said to Lisa Wallace, a homeowner with her front yard strewn with furniture and other possessions.

Both Dunleavy and Murkowski said there should be longer-term discussions about whether there could be ways to mitigate the now-annual glacial dam release, or to avoid it altogether.

“The question is going to be, how do you mitigate and control a release up there?” Dunleavy said.

“We want to do more than just monitoring. We want to be able to figure out, is this preventable?” Murkowski said.

For now, though, the focus is on recovery.

Dunleavy issued a state disaster declaration on Tuesday, which allows residents to apply for cash assistance through Oct. 9. A federal disaster declaration would allow substantially more cash assistance to be available.

Murkowski said a federal disaster declaration was denied for the 2023 Juneau flood. Last year’s flooding occurred at the same time as a devastating wildfire in Maui and unprecedented storms in South Carolina and Florida, she said.

“We stack up with the other disasters going on around the country,” she said.

Paul Converse lives a quarter mile from the river. Like many of his neighbors, he thought he was safe from Mendenhall River flooding. He doesn’t have insurance that will help. He said he talked to his insurance agent who wondered if federal assistance will be approved.

For Linda Perry, that assistance would be critical.

“I really hope they can find help for us. ‘Cause I didn’t work my whole life just to lose everything to a flood,” she said.