The waters of the Pend Oreille River in northern Idaho and northeastern Washington continue to creep higher. The river is officially above flood stage, causing damage to some residences and forcing the closure of several roads. County officials fear the warm weather this week will lead to more significant flooding during the next seven days.
JoAnn Boggs is juggling a lot of variables this week. Boggs is the deputy director for Pend Oreille County’s emergency management agency. Usually she’s joined by other county employees here in the emergency headquarters in Newport, but it was lunchtime when we dropped by and she was by herself, on the phone, trying to arrange an afternoon meeting of local leaders.
“Let’s get an update. Let’s prioritize what we’re doing," she tells a colleague on the phone. "Are we going to close the river? The lakes are staying closed, I think. That’s the kind of stuff we need to all know so when everybody leaves this room, everybody knows what’s going on. We’re heading into a holiday weekend, folks, and we gotta all be saying the same thing.”
Boggs says the Pend Oreille River has not seen flooding of this magnitude since 1997 and, until a day or so ago, the expectation was that this year’s high waters would be more significant than that. Forecasters have backed off of that prediction a bit, but there’s still uncertainty.
“They are predicting storms in Montana. If those occur and there’s a lot of rain with it, it will again change the forecast,” Boggs said.
For now, there are houses in subdivisions down the river from Newport that are already flooded. The town of Cusick has high water.
“We’ve got four roads, five roads closed right now and anticipate some more by the end of the weekend,” Boggs said.
Boggs says the county has delivered sandbags to more than a dozen locations, some in the affected subdivisions. She says Washington Conservation Corps and AmeriCorps volunteers are helping where requested. Inmates from the Geiger Correctional Facility have also been deployed.
For now, Boggs and her colleagues are answering the phones, sharing what they know and trying to keep their heads above water, pardon the pun.
“As people call, we prioritize and triage them, if you will, and to find out where we need to go next to get our folks to to help them,” Boggs said.
So far, there are no shelters open, but Boggs says the Red Cross is making plans for them in case they’re needed.