Daily Sitka Sentinel

Officials Assess Other Storm Damage Sites

By TOM HESSE and

SHANNON HAUGLAND

Sentinel Staff Writers

As recovery efforts continued today for victims of Tuesday’s Kramer Avenue landslide, city officials were assessing landslide and flooding damage in other areas of the city.

 A new slide above Ross Drive was discovered late this morning, bringing the total number of known slides to seven. Multiple slides on Blue Lake Road and major washouts on Green Lake road have prevented utility department staff from getting up to the Blue Lake Dam, Assistant Fire Chief Al Stevens said at a press conference today.

“Blue Lake Road has multiple slides on it. We are not able to get up to the dam, that is impassable. We had washouts on Green Lake Road, which has cut off our access to NSRAA and Green Lake Dam – we have had to use boats to get over to those areas,” Stevens said.

Several Coast Guard flyovers of Blue Lake Dam have shown no obvious problems, Stevens said. 

“We have not had access to our dam, physically, yet. We have had the Coast Guard assist us with an overflight, but once again the weather has hampered us on that. It appears initially that the infrastructure for the dam is OK,” Stevens said. 

The slide near the Gary Paxton Industrial Park caused significant damage to the administration building.

Garry White, director of the park, said the administration building is secured, but he’s waiting for word to reenter the building until it is inspected by the city building department. He said the landslide on the hillside across the road hit the building, creating a hole “the size of a car.” Windows were also broken on that side of the building, and a “significant amount” of mud poured into the basement, he said.

“The building is off-limits until we hear (from city inspectors),” White said. In the meantime, he said, “We’re on standby.”

The building provides office space for a bike and hike business, housing for about 60 seafood workers and storage for the Sitka Historical Society museum collection. 

Silver Bay Seafoods CEO Rich Riggs said the company’s workers who were staying in the administration building stayed on the SJ campus Tuesday night. Since their processing season was over, they left town the following day.

White said the road to the Blue Lake Dam remains closed, but “99 percent of debris” has been removed. The road was damaged when the mudslide blocked two culverts under the road.

The city’s first priority in the storm recovery remained the search for the victims of the Kramer Avenue slide (see story). 

A team of geologists from the private and public sector has inspected the Kramer Avenue site, and Stevens said other slides are being looked at to assess the future risks. 

“I also have geologists deployed, as per my request, to the other sites,” Stevens said. 

City crews rerouted water runoff from the Kramer slide away from the Sand Dollar Drive, Whale Watch Drive and Halibut Point Road neighborhoods; homes on Kramer Avenue and Jacobs Circle remain evacuated. Stevens said residents were allowed to go into their homes with an escort to gather possessions.

Besides the slides on Kramer Avenue and at the industrial park, there were slides on Ross Drive, Harbor Mountain Road, Blue Lake Road, a second slide between Kramer Avenue and Harbor Mountain Road and a sinkhole that opened up in front of the laundromat on Halibut Point Road.