Slide buries highway, strands residents

Two heavy rainstorms caused flooding and landslides in the upper valley last week, damaging infrastructure and leaving two residents temporarily stranded in their car.

Betina and Stephen Morehouse, who moved to Haines from Juneau four months ago, were headed to Whitehorse early Saturday morning when in the predawn darkness a torrent of mud and rocks swept into their car at 23 Mile Haines Highway.

“We were driving pretty slow because the weather was not that great,” Betina said. “My husband all of a sudden, out of the blue, said there’s a landslide. I slammed on my brakes, and we hit super hard into mud and rocks and boulders. The car immediately filled up to the door with mud and water.”

The car, a Kia Sportage the Morehouses had bought in Anchorage six days prior, was stuck. When Betina tried to open her door, mud filled in, she said.

“We were just right there on the right hand side of the road, where the mountain was coming down,” she said. “The whole road was covered. We couldn’t see it. It was pitch black out there. And there was no cell service, so all we could do was just sit there and hold hands and just pray.”

Trapped, the couple waited in the darkness for about an hour before an Alaska Department of Transportation (DOT) crew showed up and rescued them.

DOT maintenance and operations foreman Matt Boron said the slide deposited at least 80,000 cubic yards of debris on the highway. It was among the five biggest slides he has seen in Haines.

The highway was closed much of Saturday while the state cleared it. Both lanes reopened by 5 p.m., about 12 hours after the slide, Boron said, adding that debris removal is ongoing.

With 10.12 inches of rain last month, Haines saw its second wettest September since 2000. The National Weather Station at the border recorded its rainiest September in 10 years. Over the past two weeks, rain caused intense flooding in the Porcupine area.

Porcupine Creek jumped its bank for the first time in recent memory, flooding a local placer mine camp and the Palmer Project’s base at Big Nugget. And a sudden surge of Nugget Creek, a Tsirku River tributary, flooded a separate mining camp.

“It wiped out my sluice boxes and hoses and fittings. I’ve had pumps that got submerged that I had to dig out. It has not been a fun time,” said Mark Sebens, who has a placer mine along Porcupine Creek.

“I’ve been out there 35 years,” he said. “It has never been this bad.” Sebens estimated the flooding caused a couple thousand dollars’ worth of damage.

Below Sebens’ camp on Porcupine Creek is the Palmer Project base camp at Big Nugget. Palmer Project manager Ernie Siemoneit said Porcupine Creek “rose and fell quickly and there was some flooding along the bank in the core facility area and road into camp.” He added that the tents and buildings in the main camp area weren’t impacted, but that clean-up work caused cancellation of site tours for a week. He said there was no significant damage to report.

A loader was photographed partially buried at the edge of the camp’s entrance, on Porcupine Road.

Sebens said Porcupine Creek was “still raging” as of Monday. “Normally call it 50 feet across. It was probably in places 100 or more across, and it had risen about three feet above normal. It was a ton of water,” Sebens said.

Al Gilliam, who has a placer mine on Nugget Creek, above the Tsirku River, said his camp flooded Monday, Sept. 26, after heavy rains. “The water jumped its banks way above us, came down the access road into our camp,” Gilliam said.

He said the creek goes through a big chasm about half a mile from the Tsirku, then flows into an alluvial fan “that has been in the same channel for years and years and years.”

He said the creek got “higher than I’ve ever seen it” since he started visiting the area more than 40 years ago.

Gilliam said the flood missed the structure at his camp by about 10 feet but washed away equipment. “I’m not sure dollar-wise what we lost. I really don’t know. It could’ve been a lot worse,” he said. By the next day water levels had dropped, Gilliam said, calling it a “short, violent” flood. He said his camp is well away from the creek and that the surge of water down the road into the camp was a surprise.

Haines Borough public facilities director Ed Coffland said there was significant flooding along Porcupine Road last weekend, where it skirts the Klehini River between 26 Mile Haines Highway and Big Nugget.

“The flood was pretty good,” Coffland said. “It was higher water than we’ve seen in recent years. There were three or four miles of it that were under water. It did wash some of it out, but it actually did deposit more material on the road than it washed out.”

By Sunday the river had receded and one lane of the road was reopened to Big Nugget, Coffland said. He said the road has been flooded four times this season. A weak spot is where the road comes within a few feet of the river, near Herman Creek.

“We’re working on some longer term fixes – maybe to relocate the road up from the river,” Coffland said. The borough is planning to do engineering and design work this winter. The borough assembly allocated $30,000 in this year’s budget for routine maintenance of the road, but a larger project is planned, with possible funding from FEMA, for resurfacing and reconstruction.

The heavy rain also washed out a short section of Cathedral View Road, where culverts plugged up, Coffland said. That road is scheduled for FEMA-funded repairs next summer.

Boron, with DOT, said the new Haines Highway design kept significant debris loads from closing the highway.

“As far as handling the debris, the design worked as planned,” Boron said. “There’s no doubt…the highway would’ve been covered at 19, 19.5 and 23 all at the same time.”

There were slides at 19 and 19.5 Mile, but the big culverts under the highway were effective, Boron said. He said without the new design DOT “never would’ve gotten to 23 Mile on Saturday.”

Cleanup will take weeks, he added. “Our big pipes are totally plugged up and filled.”