Libby streets flood after ice jams creek

LIBBY — An ice jam below a Flower Creek bridge sent torrents of water through Libby on Monday morning — destroying yards, flooding basements and temporarily making roads impassable.

No one was hurt in the flash flood that carried away a backyard shed, closed down U.S. 2 and caused residents to evacuate, according to emergency response officials.

Nevada Avenue homes directly downstream from the ice jam were hardest hit — with basements reportedly being flooded with 3 to 6 feet of water — but the current also rushed east down Nevada’s crossroads and fanned out as far north as Collins and Hamann avenues.

Cabinet Avenue property on the west side of Flower Creek also took a beating.

Water pressure became so great on the massive chunks of ice that dammed up below the bridge on West Balsam Street that the water began spilling out along the sides.

A downstream resident on Cabinet Avenue was the first to report signs of flooding at 3:36 a.m., according to Lincoln County Sheriff Roby Bowe. At about 9:20 a.m. a surge of water broke through, causing Nevada Avenue to become a shallow river.

By 1:30 in the afternoon, Bowe said, the incident was considered over and all emergency personnel were sent home.

Rosie Roberts, 80, stood shivering outside her home Monday morning. She looked at the water flowing from Nevada Avenue onto the street in front of her house and the sandbags that a “kind soul” had placed at her driveway. It was 9:10 a.m. The worst was yet to come, volunteer firefighter Scott Beagle explained.

“We’re going to get a lot more water coming down here pretty soon,” he told her.

At the urging of volunteers, Roberts entered her home to collect supplies before leaving for the voluntary evacuation. Still flustered, she took a minute to look outside through the window.

“I don’t want my house to flood,” she cried, and then turned to locate her coat, boots, purse and medications.

By the time she made it out the door, the knee-deep water was too swift to walk across. Beagle took her arm and guided her to a pickup truck, which transported her to higher ground.

Beagle assured the frightened woman, “It’ll all be over in about an hour.”

Officials had been monitoring the build-up of ice at the bridge over the past weekend, said Vic White, director of Lincoln County Emergency Management Agency. The city experienced ice jams at the same bridge in 1997 and 1974.

“The ice had built up to where it was level or higher than the driving surface of the bridge for 100 yards (in both directions),” White said.

White met with officials from the sheriff’s office and police department over the past weekend to go over plans, and he and officers had been continually checking the status of the ice jam.

“The last check that I made was 2 in the morning,” he said, “and there was no signs of ice giving way — just a lot of water.”

As soon as White learned of flooding, he contacted the city crew to get a dump truck of sand out to neighboring residents for sandbags. He alerted city and county officials and then assembled teams of emergency responders.

Sometime after 4 a.m., homeowner Randy Wiza heard the city’s emergency siren. It didn’t take long before he learned what the fuss was about.

“I saw the sand truck come up the road and then I knew,” he said, pointing out that his home withstood the flood of ’97.

He and neighbors spent the morning protecting their back yards with walls of sandbags. The barriers worked OK until the surge came after 9 a.m., he said. Then nothing could hold it back.

“There used to be a shed there and a fence,” he said. “Now it’s all gone.”

Slowly, the water drained from the streets and by noon, most of the roads were reopened for travel. Boxes of pizza were stacked high on tables at the fire hall. Of the department’s 30 volunteers, 28 were able to respond. They had notified residents, sandbagged homes and blocked off dangerous roads. They also made sure that electrical circuits and propane tanks were safe from flooding.

During the 1997 flood, 17 or 18 propane tanks were washed away, fire chief Tom Wood recalled. This time around, firefighters dealt with only one tank that washed away spewing propane.

Though Monday’s flood was nothing to scoff at, he recalls the effects of Flower Creek’s ice jam in 1997 being more far-reaching.

“That particular flood, we were out there two days solid,” he said.

Excavator operators, positioned at every Flower Creek bridge in town to break up the ice, finished their work by 1:30 p.m., according to Bowe.

By that time, residents returned home and began pumping water out of their basements.

Schools and city and county buildings had already been closed Monday in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

The response side of the emergency went well, White said, because the community learned from the last flood.

“We had the experience from ’97,” he said. “A lot of those folks had been through that and they understood what happened. They developed a really good plan on how to attack that — the Flower Creek bridge all the way down.”