Tom Rosenberg, Interim Public Works Director
February 2009
Now that the weather has calmed down, we can take a moment to reflect on the weather-related events of the past two months. City staff fought the impacts of either snow or rain from December 11, 2008 to January 21, 2009. This unprecedented weather pattern caused millions of dollars in damage throughout the state, but compared with other areas, we fared pretty well.
While we fared well by comparison, the costs remain significant. For example, the Public Works Operations staff alone received a total of 835 citizen calls requesting storm-related service between December 12, 2008 and January 21, 2009. Public Works crews logged a total of 576 hours of overtime. The total cost for storm-related labor, equipment, materials and disposal was approximately $550,000.
Clean up and repairs continue, along with evaluation of our emergency-response skills and systems, so that together with other agencies and the community we can best support the community's needs during weather emergencies.
The bad weather began the evening of Friday, December 12, 2008, when the Public Works crews prepared to begin routine sanding of roads as snow began to accumulate. The next few days were manageable and keeping roads passable was achieved until the morning of December 17.
It began like a normal winter storm just after 3 a.m. December 17. Small amounts of snow began to fall in parts of the City for the next several hours, with minor accumulation. Starting at around 12 noon that day, snow began to accumulate and became a more serious problem. As a result, at approximately 1 p.m., Mayor Dan Pike declared a weather emergency, closing all non-emergency city services and allowing all but essential employees to go home.
For the next 28 days, we were challenged with snow, rain or both. According to Weather Underground, our temperatures ranged from a low of 12 degrees to a high of 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
The severity of the weather initially took a lot of people off-guard as they were preparing for the holidays. Many people were taking time off and staying very close to home, except, of course, those who had made plans to travel over the winter holidays. Scores of travelers never made it out of Bellingham or Seattle due to the sudden severe weather.
Keeping roads in the city passable was more challenging than usual because the snowfall came in waves. Plow/sander crews worked 24 hours a day for 15 days. By the time the priority arterials, neighborhood collectors, bus routes and emergency routes were passable (and they could begin clearing side streets), another storm would hit and crews were back to clearing priority streets. When time allowed crews to begin clearing residential streets, they were further challenged by the numerous cars that were parked (or abandoned) on the sides of the streets. This made it difficult to clear more than a single center lane, if equipment was able to pass through at all.
The prolonged snow was one of the most expensive in recent history. Keeping the streets passable during December required:
And then the rain came. We were all so happy to see the snow turn to rain, temperatures rise and rainwater begin to wash away the dirty gray snow. It rained for another six days straight and on New Year's Day, the snow returned. By this time Public Works crews were just catching their collective breaths as temperatures warmed. But the rain got heavier and temperatures edged up to 50 degrees, at which point emergency response officials started to get nervous. Reports of water over the road, sewers backing up and mudslides began coming in.
The city monitors rainfall at 20 different locations (JPG). The following is a selection of totals recorded between January 1 and January 8, 2009:
The water in Lake Whatcom continued to rise. As it approached the level at which the City is required by law to open the floodgates at the control dam and allow water to flow into Whatcom Creek, the most pressing issue for the Public Works Department became the potential flooding of Iowa Street and area businesses. The Public Works Director, Assistant Director, and Water Plant Chief Operator worked furiously to calculate the timing for the release. They began carefully releasing water into the creek while field crews were constantly monitoring water levels along Iowa Street to ensure they were low enough to prevent property damage. At 10:30 p.m. January 9, the lake reached its legal high level of 314.94 feet above sea level, and the gates were fully opened.
City crews continued to monitor levels downstream and the rise on Iowa Street at the I-5 on- and off-ramp was thankfully minimal. The limited rise in the creek level was mostly attributed to the 24-hour period just prior, which did not have significant rainfall. This helped reduce the creek basin runoff, thereby providing timely creek capacity as the gates were completely opened. The weather at that time being on our side was a welcome change from the previous day's events.
One of the many factors that made this event unique was the fact that it happened when the soil was already saturated from snowfall and freezing temperatures. This situation caused a significant amount of water to flow into Whatcom Creek as runoff was actually coming from the Whatcom Creek Basin, not from Lake Whatcom.
In addition to the problems faced with Whatcom Creek, several roads in the City had to be closed due to streets being flooded as the stormwater system began to exceed its capacity. Some of the major closures were:
Although the City faced many challenges during the flooding, even greater problems were faced by Whatcom County residents outside the city limits as the intense rainfall triggered many road washouts, mudslides, and area river flooding.
As the floodwaters receded, emphasis shifted to helping the community recover from storm-related damage. Working in continued collaboration with the County, officials established a shared call center and website to collect damage reports from private individuals and businesses. Volunteers processed 227 reports over the five days the center was open. Damage to publicly-owned infrastructure was also identified. All reported damages were forwarded to the State's Emergency Management Division who, working with FEMA, toured the area to verify claims and to determine if the community might qualify for federal disaster relief funds.
Repairs and clean-up work will continue through this spring and, for Whatcom County crews, even longer. These storms provided a unique opportunity for city and county staff and volunteers to work together on emergency-response skills and test the systems that support that work in the community. We are all committed to working to improve our skills, coordinate our efforts and resources, and expand communication so that when we are called to respond in the future, we will do so as a finely-tuned machine.
Published: Feb 13, 2009
