Lessons from 1996 credited with reducing flood damage
by Brent Shrum, Kootenai Valley Record
January 30, 2011
In the wake of last week’s flooding along Flower Creek, local officials are taking a look at how lessons learned 15 years ago helped minimize damages and how risks could continue to be reduced in the future.
The flood was brought on by an ice jam that broke loose upstream and clogged the bridge at Balsam Street. Weather patterns were similar to those that brought flooding in 1996, and the flood followed a similar route, but an effective response helped keep impacts to a minimum, said Lincoln County Emergency Management director Vic White.
"The key thing is the people took the lessons from ’96, and they applied them to this event, and we went from a 48-hour event to a nine-hour event," White said.
Anticipating the potential for flooding, White had been making regular checks on local creeks starting on Friday. By Sunday night, he was checking every two hours. No dramatic changes were visible, just a steady increase in water in the creeks, he said.
The first report of water in a basement near Flower Creek came in around 3:30 a.m. on Monday, and within half an hour an incident command organization started taking shape. City crews were already standing by with equipment and sandbags, and they responded along with county crews and several private contractors.
By the time the waters receded, around two dozen homes on Nevada and Cabinet avenues had experienced flooding, but the damage was much less widespread than it had been in 1996. Unlike that event, the town was never cut off on its east-west axis, White said.
Another big difference from 1996 was that flooding wasn’t a problem on Parmenter Creek. Mitigation efforts undertaken more than a decade ago that widened the creek, built levees and an overflow channel were "very effective" in reducing the flood risk, White said.
The county will be using a $20,000 grant to hire a contractor to help draft a mitigation plan for Flower Creek that could use some of the same methods put into place on Parmenter, White said.
Additional attention is being paid to a closer analysis of temperatures, precipitation and creek flows to allow for more advance warning.
"That ice jam, there’s no way now that we know how to predict it," White said.
Similar weather patterns occur every year, White said, but subtle differences can lead to disaster. Local officials are working with specialists from the National Weather Service to see if trigger points can be identified.
The installation of a new gauging station on Flower Creek above the city of Libby’s dam could help, said city administrator Jim Hammons. Right now, the only data available is from below the dam, Hammons said.
"If we had the gauging station above operating, that would tell us what’s coming into the dam," he said.
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Editor's Note: See the January 25, 2011 edition of the Kootenai Valley Record for the printed version of this story. The Kootenai Valley Record publishes once a week, on Tuesdays, in Libby, Montana. They are a locally owned community newspaper, located at 403 Mineral Avenue in Libby. For in-county and out-of-county subscription information, call 406-293-2424, or e-mail kvrecord@gmail.com.
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