By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
The rain and wind storm that lashed Sitka in the first days of December caused significant damage to roads, trails and other parts of the forest across the Tongass.
Sitka District Ranger Perry Edwards estimated that the final bill for the damages will be in the millions.
“We have extensive damage all over the Tongass National Forest. All the other rangers I’ve talked to are like, ‘Oh my god, we just got wiped out.’ When we’re all said and done it will be millions of dollars in damage,” Edwards told the Sentinel today.
A log jam is pictured on Indian River at Tenakee Inlet in this photo taken over the weekend. A fishpass and a hydroelectric intake were damaged in the recent storm. (Photo provided by Perry Edwards, USFS Sitka District Ranger)
With Forest Service crews stretched thin over 1.6 million acres in the Sitka Ranger District, Edwards asked local hikers and hunters to report any damage so it can be addressed.
“We’re really relying on people who go out to cabins to say, hey, there is an issue with this or a stream has rerouted… if there is a tree through the roof of a cabin we could potentially get out there,” he said. Someone spending time outdoors in the area should report any sort of damage to the Forest Service, Edwards said, whether it be damage to a cabin, trails, roads or other areas.
Reports of damage in the Tongass can be sent to the Forest Service at (907) 747-6671 or emailed to SM.FS.r10_sitka_rd@usda.gov.
Edwards stressed the need for timely information in order to prevent damage from worsening.
“Every flow that comes down just keeps accentuating the damage, and if we have the ability to identify those we have the ability to minimize the impacts,” he said.
Damage was not limited to the National Forest. Flooding damaged a small hydroelectric station in Tenakee Springs as well.
“Indian River, up in Tenakee Inlet, the community of Tenakee had set up a hydroelectric station there, it had some pretty extensive damage where a landslide came in,” Edwards said.
Widespread damage to bridges and culverts in previously logged areas of Chichagof Island were high on the ranger’s list of things to repair. The road networks of Corner Bay and False Island suffered in the intense rain.
“They both got a lot of damage to culverts and bridges, and some landslides. Some places where the water was so high that water was literally flowing over the top of the bridges and ripping all the stuff off of them…. We don’t know the extent of all the damage,” he said.
With bridges and culverts unsafe for vehicles to pass, Edwards said, Forest Service crews have made it only a quarter mile into the Corner Bay road network, which stretches about 20 miles all told.
“The first bridge they came to, they sent photos and there were holes in it,” he said. The damage precluded further travel into the area.
He noted that in recent decades, the Forest Service has made an effort to build culverts which allow for salmon passage, but storms like the one which blasted Southeast between Nov. 30 and Dec. 3 were too much for some infrastructure.
Edwards said there is damage to “a lot of the culverts which we have made a big effort over the past ten or fifteen years to make them big enough to pass all fish in all life stages and handle heavy flows.”
The ranger said if those streams remain blocked and diverted, harm could come to future salmon runs.
“If those streams continue to be diverted, if we didn’t do anything with them, when those adult salmon are coming back there could be issues. A lot of those smaller streams are where those coho salmon spend a few years before going out to the ocean, and they hang out in the smaller streams and go to the bigger streams… if those streams are diverted to a big flat with no habitat they will have nowhere to go,” Edwards said. He noted that salmon are adaptable, and small numbers of fish can shift between streams as well.
Fixing these culverts and bridges is a high priority for the Forest Service, he said.
Dealing with short days and coronavirus restrictions, Edwards said Forest Service crews haven’t had a chance to assess roads in St. John Baptist Bay or on Kruzof Island.
“I’ve heard rumors (of damage) at St. John’s. We have an old logging road that’s like a trail system… there are some landslides on that and we haven’t had a chance to get there. Same thing with Kruzof Island, we haven’t been able to get crews out there,” he said.
After all the damage from heavy rainfall and high winds, Edwards stressed the need for caution, especially for those using vehicles on old roads.
“People should be practicing their best situational awareness,” he said.
Edwards added that flooding near the Sitkoh Lake cabin seems to have destroyed a new outhouse and done damage to a bridge in the area.
“That’s a lot of water when there’s water coming over the top of a bridge on Sitkoh River,” Edwards said.
The Sentinel observed significant storm damage in the Salmon Lake area, where erosion and flooding have made the hiking trail difficult to pass. In some areas, the trail has devolved into a stream. Flooding up-valley, south of the lake, has rendered some areas nearly impassable for the time being.
Damage also took place on the Gavan Hill trail, not far from the Cross Trail cutoff, Edwards said. Falling rocks near the scar of an old landslide obscured the Gavan Hill trail below the 500-foot marker, and a massive downed tree blocked the route as well.
Edwards stressed the need for locals to tell the Forest Service of any damage they see.
“We are really relying on people to tell us if they see something,” he said.
Edwards noted that during his time in Alaska, storms have been fairly typical, though he believes they’ve become more frequent.
“It’s Southeast Alaska, and other places might call it a hurricane with 60 mph wind and five inches of rain, but we call it fall. But this has been above and beyond what a normal fall in Alaska has been. We’re getting more and more of those,” Edwards said.
