Residents left without efficient means to access their homes
Beach Road east of a barricade at the far end of Portage Cove will remain closed to the public after the Haines Borough Assembly voted unanimously to extend the closure at a meeting Tuesday.
Mayor Douglas Olerud originally closed the road after a Dec. 2 landslide took out three homes and left two people presumed dead. Although the original version of the closure order specified that those entering the closed area would be subject to prosecution, the resolution the assembly approved at Tuesday’s meeting left out that language.
“We removed the prosecution aspect of it so it wouldn’t be penalizing individuals that have property on the far side of the slide from walking across the slide if they felt that they wanted to take on that risk,” Olerud said at Tuesday’s meeting.
The closure has left at least a dozen families separated from houses, cars and in some cases, means of earning an income. Based on data collected by state geologists, on Dec. 18, the Haines Borough Emergency Operations Center (EOC) lifted the mandatory evacuation order for houses at the very end of Beach Road, allowing some residents to return home in theory. In actual practice, it’s still very difficult to access homes, residents said at Tuesday’s assembly meeting.
“I am living in a little apartment in town while everything I own is out there on Beach Road. In order for me to go get it, I have to decide whether it’s feasible to cross a landslide. On Saturday, I had friends who were willing to go with me if that’s what I wanted. I went up, I looked at the landslide, and I saw water. I said, “No, I’m not going to ask my friends and my coworkers to go and put their lives at risk.” On the flip side of that, how else am I going to get home?” Beach Road resident Sally Garton said during public comment.
Garton said the alternative to crossing the slide on foot involves taking a boat to the far end of Beach Road, landing a smaller raft on the beach and climbing up a steep hillside through a neighbor’s property. She said she has expended most of her savings trying to replace household items and personal belongings she hasn’t been able to retrieve from her house.
“When you consider what this next step is for the Beach Road residents, just think about that—think about what these people had and how hard it is to be able to go in and out and to be able to move things,” Garton said to assembly members.
Before Tuesday’s vote, assembly members Gabe Thomas and Caitie Kirby said prior to a Jan. 8 meeting about the state’s efforts to contract with a geotechnical engineering consultant to assess landslide risks in the area, they had intended to vote “no” on the resolution to keep Beach Road closed.
“I had every intention at this meeting when I first thought about this resolution to come in here and bulldog and bully you guys into building a temporary road. I feel for these people. But after listening to that (meeting) on Friday, it seems like the state’s moving as fast as they can and are working with us as best they can, and I don’t want to jeopardize that relationship,” Thomas said.
The state is in the process of negotiating a contract with geotechnical engineering firm R&M Consultants, Inc. to study the geology of the area to inform decisions about search and rescue activities, short-term access to houses and whether it’s safe to occupy the area in the long term.
At the Friday meeting Thomas and Kirby referenced, state officials explained to Beach Road residents that the contract, managed by the Alaska Department of Transportation (DOT), is being rushed through on a shortened timeline. The project was advertised on Dec. 28. The department is hoping to finalize a contract by Jan. 20 and have people in the field by the end of the month, according to DOT engineering geologist Mitch McDonald.
The company’s first responsibility will be conducting a “winter field reconnaissance” to gather information about site stability. The hope is that information gathered in the next three to six weeks will give geologists and engineers a better understanding of measures they can take to allow residents to safely access homes, at least on a temporary basis, DOT technical engineer Travis Eckhoff said. Beginning in the spring, once the snow melts, the geotechnical engineering firm will conduct a more in-depth field investigation.
At the Friday meeting, some Beach Road residents expressed frustration about the timeline of the study, which leaves residents separated from homes for an indefinite period of time.
“What’s the end game here? Are we going to wait six to nine months and then find out we’ll never be able to live there again? In the meantime, all of our lives are in limbo here. It’s agonizing. It’s absolutely agonizing,” Beach Road resident Paul Graf said.
In consultation with local contractors, some residents have come up with plans for taking immediate action, proposing detonation of the crack in the bedrock next to the current slide that geologists have flagged as a potential landslide hazard, and the construction of a temporary access road to allow residents to extract cars and larger belongings. Don Turner spoke at the meeting, confirming his willingness to put in a path to allow residents to access homes.
“We have people right now who will build a road… I really believe that if you guys would do a little more action and a little less study, that everybody’s going to end up a lot happier in the end,” Michael Balise said, referencing the fact that a number of residents are opting to walk through the slide area, under the crack in the hillside in order to access homes.
State officials said the reason for moving forward with the geologic assessment first is to gain a better sense of the unintended consequences of various strategies for accessing homes.
“The reason why we wanted to go through this whole process was to make the situation safe for responders, construction, utility reconstruction, access,” state emergency management specialist Claude Denver said. Conducting a study first allows experts to assess the risk of potential access strategies like blowing up the hillside with the crack or putting an access road through the toe of the landslide.
Putting a temporary access road through the slide could potentially destabilize the area, according to McDonald.
“The worst thing you can do to a landslide deposit is cut the toe of it out. So if you go in there to establish a temporary road access along the old alignment, that’s essentially what you’ll be doing. It’s either going to be a fill, which will load the slope, or it’s going to be a cut which will remove the buttressing effect of the toe, or it’ll be a balanced cut-fill which is a little bit of both,” McDonald said.
Similarly, the proposal to purposely detonate the crack in the bedrock is inadvisable at present because geologists don’t know enough to accurately predict what could happen.
“At this point, with the little bit of data that we have, we can’t say (how much of the hillside would fail) …we also don’t know if it does fail, what’s the actual nature of how it will fail, which way will it tip when it goes,” Engineering Geology Section chief for the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys (DGGS) De Anne Stevens said.
The geotechnical analysis is part of the community’s transition from emergency response to a long-term recovery phase.
At Tuesday’s assembly meeting, the EOC officially transferred responsibility for ongoing disaster response to the borough. The assembly voted to form an ad hoc committee to coordinate various aspects of the ongoing response including resources for evacuees, long-term economic recovery and the geotechnical assessment.
Olerud asked assembly members interested in serving on the ad hoc committee to send him an email. He said he will appoint three members to the committee from those interested.
At Tuesday’s meeting, assembly members expressed interest in meeting in person with displaced Beach Road residents in the near future. They charged borough staff with securing a venue and figuring out the technical logistics of the meeting.