Teetering house swept away, Little Su encroaching

BUTTE — After dangling like a loose tooth in the maw of the Matanuska River for more than a week, a cabin at Mile 15, Glenn Highway washed into the river around 11:30 a.m., Monday.

When it left its precarious perch along the eroding riverbank, the cabin belonged to Chris and Daina Mirsch Wenner. The family evacuated the property at 1150 N. Old Glenn Hwy. July 23 when the river began chewing through their land.

“We’ve lost 10 to 15 feet just overnight,” Mirsch-Wenner said July 23. “They were out there last night and trees were falling along the shore.”

For now, the remains of the cabin have come to rest off the backside of Pat Huddleson’s property at Mile 14, Old Glenn Highway. A gravel bar near her house also is where a septic tank thought to have washed from the Wenner property earlier this month came to rest.

“The cabin is right there on the sandbar where she was reporting the septic tanks,” said Casey Cook, Mat-Su Borough Emergency Manager.

Huddleson said since this round of destruction began an airboat, septic tank and now a cabin have washed ashore near her house along the river.

“I’ve called the DEC, the EPA — this is a disgrace,” she said. “Everywhere I’ve called I get the same reply — ‘It’s not our problem.’”

Huddleson said it won’t be many years before her home and 10 or so of her neighbors experience this same fate.

Cook said the cabin is under water up to its roofline and he doesn’t know whether it’s just the roof floating there, or if some of the walls are still attached.

Cook said the Alaska Railroad has been notified and examined the cabin and the risk it could pose to its bridge farther along the river.

“Railroad came out and accessed and deemed that it isn’t endangering their bridge,” Cook said.

Water also has moved in around the main residence on the Wenners property, he said.

Several inches of rain Sunday also raised water levels and threatened homes along the Little Susitna River Monday, he said.

Two homeowners contacted the borough Monday with reports of rising water and evacuations, Cook said.

One homeowner off Moose Meadow Drive reported his house was flooding. Cook said Butte and West Lakes Fire Departments delivered sandbags to the home to help its owner keep the water out. And Palmer Fire responded to reports of a home off Gyland Road that was flooding, too.

Cook said the property off Gyland also battled erosion trouble earlier in the season.

“The homeowners are moving belongings to storage,” he said.

Another spot at the end of Schrock Road also has water flowing across it, Cook said.

He said the clear weather forecasted for the next couple of days might help, but more rain is forecasted to follow.

“The water already is up high now,” Cook said.

Mat-Su Borough’s director of Emergency Services Dennis Brodigan said the state of Alaska and U.S. Coast Guard were both notified Monday about the cabin that went in.

“Once that went into the river, it’s now kind of the state of Alaska and the U.S. Coast Guard that now have a dog in this,” he said.

Cook said if other people are experiencing flooding, they should call 911 for assistance.

Contact managing editor Heather A. Resz at heather.resz@frontiersman.com or 352-2268.