On August 5, 2023, an uncharacteristically sunny day, I got a text from my friend telling me that her house had fallen into the river. I had to read the text once or twice and watch the video before I really understood what she meant. Her house had fallen into the river.
Flooding is a pretty common hazard in Juneau, Alaska. It sits in the middle of the Pacific coastal temperate rain forest and gets between 55 and 90 inches of rain a year, and most of our floods come from the heavy downpours of rain we get during the spring and fall months. But the rest of our floods, like this one, come from glacial outburst flooding. Glacial outburst flooding happens when glacial basins fill with water (this water comes from glacial melt) to the point that it flood into connected bodies of water. Glacier outburst flooding, specifically from Suicide Basin, a basin on the side of the Mendenhall Glacier, has been happening pretty consistently at least once a year since 2011. For most of the year the basin collects water from melting ice and rainwater, and is dammed by the Mendenhall Glacier itself, but as that water builds pressure builds too. Eventually the collection of water begins to crack the ice, then it travels through the cracks out under the glacier into the adjacent Mendenhall Lake (Canny).
This is what happened on August 5, 2023. Suicide Basin burst, the water releasing into Mendenhall Lake, and then making its way, in unprecedented volumes at unprecedented speeds, into the Mendenhall River, a river that runs through the center of Juneau and through many residential areas. Suicide Basin has been flooding for the past ten years, what makes this incident remarkable is the scope of the flood and the damages. This year nearly 13 billion gallons of water flooded out of the basin into the Mendenhall river, and it is already called the "most destructive" glacial flood Juneau has ever seen (Canny). Luckily river levels subsided by Monday, August 7, but that doesn't mean the flood did no damage.
This flood resulted in two homes completely lost to the river (one of those being my friend's), another deeply damaged, and an apartment building teetering on the river bank, condemned. Luckily, no people were harmed in the incident, everyone in the lost homes were not in them when they fell, and everyone in the apartment building was able to make it out. Despite the lack of human loss this is not an incident people will be forgetting anytime soon, you'd be hard pressed to find someone in Juneau that doesn't have a personal connection to what happened, and especially since scientists saying in coming years flooding should only get worse, this might be remembered as the beginning of a new era of hazard in Juneau.
Canny, A., & Anna Canny, K. (2023, August 24). Why this year’s record glacial outburst flood likely won’t be Juneau’s worst. KTOO. https://www.ktoo.org/2023/08/11/why-this-years-record-glacial-outburst-flood-likely-wont-be-juneaus-worst/
Bohrer, B. (2023, August 8). Glacial dam outburst in Alaska’s capital erodes riverbanks, destroys at least 2 buildings. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/alaska-flooding-glacier-dam-outburst-juneau-b196999d25e22df8b01d7907735ed5b8
US Department of Commerce, N. (n.d.). Suicide Basin. Www.weather.gov. https://www.weather.gov/ajk/suicideBasin
This post made me wonder if a lot of Alaskans have flood insurance (especially if houses are falling into the water) and what flood preventions look like in Alaska. The state seems to have a variety of natural disasters (flooding, freezing, avalanche, etc), so I wonder how often people reflect on how natural disasters impact their lives, and how that consciousness impacts the number of prevention measures/people who purchase insurance.
ReplyDeleteThat's really scary! With increased likelihoods of natural disasters like these, I wonder if the Alaskan government is prepared to create infrastructure that is better equipped to withstand flooding. You mention that flooding is not a new concern, so I imagine that some measures are in place already, but clearly, they are not entirely sufficient. I wonder if there will be efforts to strengthen Suicide Basin, and if there might be laws against building new homes along the river bank.
ReplyDeleteAdding to what was already said, I wonder also if these increasing floodings and hazards may eventually drive people out of Juneau. I'm also curious to hear why people decide to stay in Juneau even though these hazards don't seem to be disappearing.
ReplyDeleteThis is such an interesting perspective! I feel like the increase in floods and erosion could/might be a longterm geological process that will affect the geography of our planet in the coming millennia.
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