Forest Service closes damaged roads in North Idaho

Federal officials have ordered the closure of a handful of Forest Service roads in North Idaho because of flood damage.

The Idaho Panhandle National Forest on Thursday finalized four separate closure orders that will stay in place until the roads are repaired.

In the Coeur d’Alene River drainage, officials closed Forest Road 412, also known as Shoshone Creek Road.

To the west, they closed parts of three roads in the East Fork Hayden Creek drainage – 1530, 437 and 406.

Near Sandpoint, the agency shuttered Lightning Creek Road after parts of the paved road washed out and roads 231 and 293 in the Pack River drainage.

The agency doesn’t have a full accounting of all the damage on the 2.5 -million -acre forest, especially since the floods were followed by a massive windstorm.

Patrick Lair, a Forest Service spokesman, said officials have no way of accounting for all the damage on the forest, and that it’s possible more problems will become apparent in the spring.

“We still have to make it through a regular winter with spring runoff,” Lair said.

Other national forests in the region are struggling, too. The Kootenai National Forest in northwest Montana has closed several roads, and it said in a Facebook post that the Ross Creek Cedars area took on significant damage from the floods.