Residents in Alaska’s capital clear flooded homes after an ice dam burst and triggered a flash flood

In her backyard, under the blazing sun, Debbie Penrose Fischer flipped through a waterlogged cookbook with sentimental value that she hoped to save but doubted she could. Nearby, friends helped remove boxes from her family’s garage, which flooded this week after a lake dammed by the Mendenhall Glacier broke — sending floodwaters into neighborhoods like hers that never cared this threat before.

“We are blessed,” she said. “No one was hurt. A lot of things I love are gone and I don’t like that. But it’s just stuff, you know?”

About 100 homes and some businesses were affected by the rapidly rising floodwaters, which reached around 3:15 a.m. Tuesday, according to initial estimates. In some areas, cars drifted as people rushed to evacuate. Fischer’s daughter, Alyssa, who lives across the street, said the water in the road was up to her hips at one point.

The waters began receding Tuesday, and water levels were back in the normal range for this time of year by Wednesday afternoon, the National Weather Service said.

The flooding is happening because a smaller glacier near Mendenhall Glacier has retreated — a victim of global warming — and left a basin that fills with rainwater and melts every spring and summer. When the water builds up enough pressure, it forces its way under or around the ice dam created by the Mendenhall Glacier and enters Lake Mendenhall and eventually the Mendenhall River, as it did this week.

Since 2011, the phenomenon has sometimes flooded streets or homes near the lake and river, and last year, floods ate away large chunks of the riverbank, flooded homes and sent at least one residence crashing into the raging river.

But the extent of this week’s flooding was unprecedented, officials said, and left residents reeling as they tried to dry out furniture, books and other belongings during a spell of warm, sunny weather. On Wednesday, piles of trash bags and other items — wood, boxes, wet insulation and carpeting — dotted the curbs. A street sweeper tackles the gray, sloppy dirt the receding waters have left behind.

While the basin was created by glacial retreat, climate change plays almost no role in the year-to-year variations in Juneau’s flood volume, said Eran Hood, a professor of environmental science at the University of Alaska Southeast , who studied Mendenhall Glacier for years.

“It’s very clear that these floods are going to persist for some period of time, again, some sort of decade into the future,” he said. “But there are so many different competing factors that work to either increase flood volume or reduce flood volume that we need to be able to quantify, that it’s difficult to say how big floods will be in the future without a lot more. detailed modeling of glacier dynamics.”

At some point, the Mendenhall Glacier will retreat and thin enough that it can no longer act as a dam, Hood said.

The floods are a reminder of the global risk posed by the breaking of snow and ice dams – a phenomenon called jökulhlaup, which is little known in the US but could threaten an estimated 15 million people worldwide.

Juneau, a city of about 30,000 in Southeast Alaska, is accessible only by plane or boat. It’s the height of the tourist season and the city is already struggling with a housing shortage that could limit the temporary accommodation available for flood victims who may need it. Juneau also has limited car rental agencies for those whose vehicles have been flooded.

The Mendenhall River reached a new record high of 15.99 feet, surpassing the level during last year’s flood by about a foot, and water reached further into the Mendenhall Valley, officials said. The city said water reached some homes outside of expected flood zones. The valley is about a 15 to 20 minute drive from downtown Juneau

Alyssa Fischer said when she went to bed Monday night, she didn’t think she had to worry about flooding where she lives. Her father woke her a few hours later via FaceTime and alerted her that the water was rising outside. She helped her move her cars to higher ground, as well as her quail, before evacuating with her 4- and 8-year-old children and pets to a shelter at a local school. She said she noticed her truck’s license plate was bent by the water.

On Wednesday, she was relieved that the damage to her property was mostly limited to a crawl space and garage. She had boxes, rugs and other items in her yard and had a fan to help dry out the garage.

But she worries about the future. When she bought the house earlier this year, it was a selling point for her that it wasn’t on the river. After they returned home on Tuesday, her 8-year-old daughter asked when the floods would return.

“I think next year, around this time, I’ll definitely be stressed,” she said. She said she would like to see community meetings about how to deal with future flooding events.

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