Borough, Governor declare disaster area; evacuation plans recommended

BUTTE — The Mat-Su Borough on Monday announced the areas around the banks of the Matanuska River between mile posts 12.5 and 15 on the Old Glenn Highway to be a disaster area, and encouraged all residents in the area to make an evacuation plan.

“We’ve declared a local disaster,” Assemblyman Jim Sykes said at an impromptu press conference along the ever-eroding bank of the river mere feet from the highway. “I don’t know if the governor’s going to go along with that, but that’s where it’s headed.”

As of 6 p.m. Monday night, the borough said that Gov. Bill Walker also declared a disaster in support of the borough’s request for state assistance. According to a press release from the governor’s office, “the state disaster declaration will support DOT&PF in their effort to protect critical infrastructure and also enables federal resources to assist such as those from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Department of Transportation.”

Borough Director of Emergency Services Bill Gamble said the borough does not utilize mandatory evacuations, but he and his staff were to begin knocking on Butte residents’ doors Monday night, strongly urging them to make preparations.

“Tonight we’re going door to door encouraging people to make a pre-evacuation checklist of folks, advising them of the potential of flooding,” Gamble said. “They should have a plan to save their valuable possessions, pets, livestock.”

For the last 10 days, Gamble said, the borough has been advertising of the possibility that, by the hour, is becoming an eventuality.

While the borough waits on the governor’s office to act, Sykes said, its public works department will take it upon itself to cut down a series of trees under serious threat from the erosion and subsequent flooding, and using them to act as diversions for the rushing water.

At the Maud Road entryway, and just 100 meters from the site of the press conference, a few felled trees lay in the river way, work done by townspeople.

Sykes said it is possible work could begin on fashioning the makeshift dikes as early as Tuesday afternoon, depending on how soon the borough can contract out the work.

“The history of the river is basically, it can hit any object and decide to change,” Sykes said. “It attacks the bank for a while, then goes for a while. This time, it’s ben attacking the bank and hasn’t left.”