Residents in Alaska’s capital, Juneau, were urged on Monday to stay away from the Mendenhall River after flooding from a glacier that destroyed two buildings and collapsed riverbanks in the city over the weekend. Local officials declared a state of emergency.
Water released from Suicide Basin – an ice-covered depression near the Mendenhall Glacier, which is about 13 miles from the city – caused the Mendenhall River to flood on Saturday.
Floodwaters have been receding since the eruption, according to the National Weather Service, but officials warned residents to stay away from the river’s banks.
“Although flooding is no longer expected to pose a threat, hazards continue on and near the Mendenhall River,” the Weather Service warned. “Please continue to heed remaining road closures,” it said, adding that residents should “stay out of the river and away from unstable banks.”
Water levels rose Saturday night, reaching 14.97 feet, according to Juneau’s Engineering and Public Works Departmentwhich surpassed the 2016 record of 11.99 feet.
Two buildings completely collapsed into the river, three wastewater pumping stations were submerged and several fuel tanks were swept away, according to the Juneau city assembly. Video posted on social media showed the slow, dramatic collapse of one of the buildings into the water as the river bank collapsed. Later, local officials said the eight buildings that were damaged were condemned.
No deaths or injuries were reported.
For more than a decade, streams of water from the thinning Mendenhall Glacier have been an annual summertime occurrence. The phenomenon — known as jokulhlaup, an Icelandic word commonly translated as “glacier leap” — threatened homes and property along the Mendenhall River. Other eruptions have followed since then.
As the water builds up in the Suicide Basin and needs an outlet, it can lift some parts of the glacier slightly. With that lift, the water finds an outlet and, under the pressure of the ice descending on it, bursts out into the depths of Mendenhall Lake, and from there, into the river.
Many glaciers have been melting since the 1900s, according to the World Wildlife Fund. And according to a United Nations report last year, some of the world’s most visited glaciers could disappear by 2050 due to climate change. Among them are the last remaining glaciers in Africa, Kilimanjaro National Park and Mount Kenya.
Alaskans are no strangers to melting glaciers or climate change, either. “Alaska’s glaciers are in steep decline and are among the fastest melting glaciers on Earth,” according to State Department of Natural Resources. And the Arctic is warming four times faster than the global average, the researchers said.
What’s troubling about last weekend’s glacial outbursts in Juneau is the proximity of the glacier to people. The approximately 12-mile-long Mendenhall Glacier is a tourist attraction in the middle of an urban area, often for people on cruises that stop at the Port of Juneau.
Part of what made this flood different was the intensity of the water release, Eran Hood, a professor of environmental science at the University of Alaska Southeast, said. told The Associated Press. Normally, the water is released within a few days, he said, but in this case, “the flows are far beyond what anything in the river can withstand.”