“It came in like faucets through every doorway”

When the water in the Mendenhall River began to rise sharply August 6Danielle Lindoff and husband Kamal were ready, but there was hope. Jokullaups — the Icelandic word for a flood from a glacial lake — has barely touched their property for years, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service recently determined in a survey of neighbors that their land near the river is not at risk of erosion.

“Every year we watched the river rise and fall, rise and fall. It never got to the level where it was even in our area,” Danielle shared in a phone conversation with The Cool Down in September, explaining how no one discussed jökulhlaups with his family when they moved into their home in Juneau, Alaska in 2012.

Jokullaups were unusual for Mendenhall until 2011, according to US Department of Agriculture. However, like others critical glaciers all over the world, those in the Juneau area are melting at an accelerated pace. In August, a glacial outburst caused a historic flood, when the river rose to unprecedented levels 15.99 feet just one year after setting the previous record 14.92 feet.

According to Danielle, a flood in 2023 caused water to enter the Lindoffs’ garage, even though her home was many feet from the river. Fortunately, her family escaped damage to their living quarters — even though they were out of town and unable to take mitigation measures. (Their neighbors moved some things from the flooded garage.)

“They always said the 100-year flood was coming,” Danielle told The Cool Down. “So we thought, ‘Okay, okay, it happened,’ and we got really lucky.”

Still, when Daniel and Kamal were alerted that the pool was about to flood this summer, they sprung into action by placing sandbags along their property, adding temporary waterproofing to their doors and moving items to higher levels.

Although they did their best, their preparations were no match for the Mendenhall River, which had completely overtaken their home and made escape treacherous as Kamal swam to their boat nearby and returned for Danielle as she climbed out the window.

“In fact, our house was only part of the river. … It was coming in like faucets through every doorway,” Danielle told The Cool Down, explaining that the fast-moving river was carrying hazardous debris and driving a large log into the garage, letting water through. pour in more freely.

A trace of destruction remained The Lindoffs and more than 300 other households in Juneau who turn to each other for support through city meetings and resources such as GoFundMewhich helped raise over $200,000 those affect the flood of Juno and mortal landslides in Ketchikan by early September, according to an email from the company.

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“I’m very grateful that my sister said, ‘I’ll start you GoFundMe“because we wouldn’t have had anything other than our regular income to cover all the things that needed to be done,” Danielle told The Cool Down, explaining that she didn’t dare publicly ask for help, but the crowdfunding platform provided crucial support .

As Danielle shared, she felt an urgency to safely and securely restore her home as soon as possible by upgrading the patio entry to a double storm doors, investment in flood gates and consideration of other mitigation measures such as aqua dams. She added that she and Kamalwhich is Tlingit and a Tlingit and Haida tribal citizens, were also very grateful for the significant assistance from the T&H Emergency Operations Team.

For Danielle, lower level rehabilitation was especially important as flare-ups of long-standing rheumatoid arthritis, first diagnosed at 18 months of age, affected her mobility.

“That level of the house was my territory. It was there that I was able to move around in my own home without pain or assistance,” Danielle told The Cool Down. “It was hard to have one more person trying to take away my independence … I look at those stairs and it’s like a tunnel that never ends.”

In addition to constant financial support from GoFundMe donation As recovery efforts continue, when asked how else to help people in Alaska, Danielle spoke with compassion, revealing she feels it’s important raising awareness about how rising global temperatures are affecting communities both at the last frontier and in all over the world.

“Two whole blocks over … were completely under water,” Danielle told The Cool Down. “So people who didn’t suspect or expect that this flood could affect them lost everything.”

Experts associate climate warming not only with the melting of glaciers, but also with more intense extreme weatherincluding increased risk of flooding and heavy rainfall—as seen during atmospheric river leading to landslides in Ketchikan.

According to NASAmore than 100 years of scientific evidence suggests that human activity, especially the burning of dirty fuels, is the main cause of rising temperatures.

“All this is directly related to climate change. Everyone in this country has noticed both extreme weather or extreme things. “Our meltdown,” Danielle told The Cool Down, reiterating that Mendenhall flooding has “never been like this” in years past.

“So something has changed,” she added. “Whatever your reasons for saying this out loud, know that people are affected by climate change every day. Maybe it’s time to think a little more about the “why.”

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