Borough moves to 'Plan B' on Willow Creek Flood

WILLOW — Emotional residents attended the Willow Creek Flood Town Hall at the Willow Community Center on Thursday to voice their concerns about what many of them perceived as a lack of information and services provided by the Mat-Su Borough in the worst moments of the Willow Creek Flood.

After a Disaster Declaration by the Mat-Su Borough in requesting assistance from the state to help cover costs of the flood that affects an estimated 50 to 60 residents near Deneki Road, Governor Mike Dunleavy has not issued a state disaster declaration in response to that request from Borough Mayor Halter and Manager Moosey. The flood broke out on Dec. 22 when cold temperatures dammed the river and sent the overflow of Willow Creek down Deneki Road, stranding residents who attempted to drive through the flood.

One resident, who wished not to be named, pleaded with Borough officials to put a sign up to warn neighbors of the impending danger as soon as the threat to safety was identified. While many of the comments from the 30 people in attendance were positive, commending the work of the Water Rescue team, not all comments contained praise. Several residents affected by the flood chided the Borough for their lack of release of information to neighbors during the emergency. After deploying an ice dam to keep the flood from continuing to flow down Deneki Road, the Borough is preparing to go to Plan B.

“Plan B is to actually get into the river channel and start pulling the ice out,” said HDL’s Dave Ludine.

The response from the Department of Emergency Services following the report of flooding before Christmas has been exhaustive, responding to seven emergency calls on the first night. The Willow Fire Department were some of the first responders on scene, and the Borough Water Rescue team provided 18 round trips on Dec. 22 alone to allow residents to get food, fuel, and supplies for those who decided to shelter in place. A shelter was set up at the Willow Community Center within hours of the reports of flooding, and five people required the shelter during the second night of the flood.

“On December 30, again, the water team was back out and I want to mention something about the water rescue team. So when we had the wildland fires, we ended up using fire departments from throughout the state but we can do that. We have fire departments we brought up from Palmer, Butte, Talkeetna — they were all here helping us with that one thing but in the borough with the water rescue team, there’s only one team and they’re volunteers,” said Borough Department of Emergency Services Director Ken Barkley. “They’re paid, on call, they work for me, but they were doing this throughout the whole time they had two days off in two weeks and that was Christmas and New Year’s. That’s the only two days that they were off; other than that they were here doing all the work all the shuttling in 18-below in the water walking through and helping people out, so between the Red Cross, them and our CERT team, those are the true heroes of this operation.”

As the Borough continues to monitor how the flood will develop throughout the rest of winter and spring breakup, other methods of egress are being expedited. Halter said that on Tuesday, the Assembly will vote on a measure to move the Shirley Town Bridge to the top of their priority list. The Shirley Town Bridge was destroyed in flooding in 2012, but would provide a much more accessible route for evacuation, if necessary, as the flood progresses. The bridge is not completely destroyed and one resident claimed that it would be made passable for foot traffic with a trip to the lumber store, but Borough officials are hoping to get a quick repair followed by a complete replacement soon. Another option to repair the bridge is a request that Emergency Manager Casey Cook put in to the Department of Transportation for a portable, prefabricated truss bridge called a Bailey Bridge. As soon as a resident asked the question, Cook responded that he had submitted a request for a Bailey Bridge on Thursday to DOT, who are currently using their only Bailey Bridge in Soldotna.

“Right now we do have the road; it’s ‘quasi passable’ but it’s not for small vehicles at all,” said Borough Operations and Maintenance Manager Jim Jenson. “Long term this is not viable. We would have to be out there maintaining this all winter long.”

Jenson detailed the processes employed by the Borough to construct the ice dam and illustrated what Plan B might look like, dropping a massive excavator onto nearly four feet of ice in the river. To do that, the Borough is waiting on permitting to go through the state.