Overflow Flood Waters Threaten House and Road System

Observation by Sonny Lamont:

This overflow is getting close to the main road managed by the state, it is also threatening some fish smokehouses along the river bank and a couple of homes it is getting close to.

Update on 1/30/2020 by Sonny Lamont and Savannah Anelon:

Overflow is causing flooding and threatening a house. It's rising daily and fast and no sign of slowing down. We haven't seen it this bad here in Newhalen before. A hole was opened for religious purposes about two weeks ago. Then the water started to overflow shortly thereafter. It is getting worse because it got cold enough to freeze and then the amount of overflow increased. The water is now over the bank. At this point the flooding is covering the smoke houses on three properties. On one, it is up to the porch but has not entered the house and no one has evacuated. We just started to work on this yesterday. Right now they are bringing gravel using a loader and putting up berms between the houses and the river. Yesterday they starting making more holes in the river to try and slow down the overflow. So far this is working okay. If it keeps going like this, we are concerned it might flood the house. Our tribal administrator Joanne Wassillie has been making calls to try and get help.

Edward "Ted" Smith, Emergency Preparedness Manager at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, writes:

This event information was shared with the State Emergency Operations Center.

Comments from LEO Editors:

This observation has been shared with the Alaska Department of Transportation and the Bristol Bay Native Association.

More information about the Newhalen overflow flooding can be found in the State of Alaska Daily Situation Report for January 12th, 2020.

2/5/2020

The Daily Situation Report for February 5th, 2020 reports that the water levels dropped due to warm temperatures, and no damages were reported.