North Idaho Preparing For Flooding Disaster Experts, Residents Readying Sandbags, Installing Culverts And Waiting For Rain

North Idaho is holding its breath, hoping that lawns, homes and lives won’t again drown beneath rising flood waters.

There’s been no major flooding yet, but homeowners and disaster specialists have learned last year’s soggy lesson. They’re readying thousands of sandbags, installing culverts and measuring water levels each day. And according to the National Weather Service, more rain is on the way.

Gordon Anderson awoke Tuesday to find a once-dry channel near his two Harbor Island homes was now a sliver of river. Neighbors and the Post Falls Highway District had just installed a new 7-foot culvert there last week.

“If we hadn’t have done it last week, we wouldn’t have been able to do it,” Anderson said, standing atop the culvert and staring into the rippling, muddy soup below. A concrete slab lists the scratched-in names of the homeowners and workers who installed it.

“You can watch it rise by the hour,” he said. During last year’s flood, his yard was under two feet of water. It took 500 people and 70,000 sandbags to save the 90-or-so homes on the island.

Anderson spent Tuesday filling sandbags, just in case. Others on the island wrapped their wells with layers of sandbags, just in case the river crept up that way.

In the meantime, water levels are on an up-down cycle that’s driving disaster service staffs crazy.

“The weather keeps doing this to us. It’s like playing a waiting game,” said Sandy Von Behren, operations superintendent for Kootenai County Disaster Services.

Hayden Lake has risen seven inches since Thursday. “That’s quite a bit,” Von Behren said, but it was still below flood level.

Von Behren expects another half-inch to an inch of rain by Wednesday, “which will bring the Coeur d’Alene River back up to flood stage,” she said. It had receded Tuesday.

Near Enaville, where several homes were washed out last year, the river was down 2 feet from where it was Monday. Shoshone County Disaster Coordinator Bill Scott was relieved at that, but worried about the incoming rain and further mountain melt-offs.

“There’s a tremendous potential for flooding up there,” he said.

In Bonner County, some county and private roads were flooded due to swamped culverts, said Diana Gray, county staff director. It hasn’t caused major problems, but they’re stockpiling sandbags nonetheless. Boundary County suffered from flooded roads over the weekend.

Benewah County may be the busiest - the St. Joe River is already at flood stage. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the county are teaming up to fix a leak in a levee that breached last year, said civil defense director George Currier. They’re also planning to raise some of the levees.

In the meantime, people like Bill Scott are at the mercy of the skies and thawing mountaintops.

“All you can do is hope and pray it comes down slowly.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: FLOOD TRAINING The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will hold training sessions in Benewah and Kootenai counties. There will be a sandbag demonstration at 4 p.m. today at the Cormana Building in St. Maries. There will be another open to the public at 5:30 p.m. Thursday at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds.