Lane County: Radar ‘dead zone’ fails residents again; commissioner promotes flood preparedness

Presenter: With a quick briefing March 18 on the recent flooding and evacuations, Lane County Administrator Steve Mokrohisky:

Steve Mokrohisky (Lane County, administrator): We continue to have challenges with weather forecasting because of the lack of radar in our area. We really are a dead zone for weather forecasting, and we saw this last year in the ice storm. It was very difficult to predict what had happened. Similarly, with the rain, it had predicted sort of light rain. It was really heavy.

And so on Sunday, you know, earlier parts of this last Sunday, we had some significant flooding events that started to take place, particularly in the Marcola and Mohawk area, as well as southern part of the county around Cottage Grove, many other parts of the county.

[00:00:39] But our coordination events happened largely in those areas. There was a Level 1 evacuation that the sheriff declared in the Mohawk area, coordination around sheltering, particularly in Cottage Grove.

[00:00:51] Wildfires, they tend to happen, you know, in an area, and then there’s intensive response that occurs in those areas. With a flooding event like this, you can have multiple communities that are affected.

[00:01:00] And so, obviously, Lane County’s ability to provide all of the response efforts in those communities is limited, but our role largely is in coordinating and identifying what are the needs of those communities around sheltering or for sandbags and for other road clearance-type needs.

[00:01:17] And so, we activated our Emergency Operations Center early afternoon on Sunday. The Sheriff’s Office, county emergency management, our policy team, technology team, our PIO, many others participated in that. Thanks to Commissioner Buch for communication and outreach with officials in those areas.

[00:01:36] Thankfully we got a reprieve yesterday and today from the rain, and so it has helped us sort of recover. We’re going to see a few more days, it looks like, of continued rain over the next few days before the weather appears to improve as we head into the weekend and early next week. So we’re continuing to monitor that.

[00:01:51] We had a cooperators call on Sunday at 3 p.m. I believe, where we had, I don’t know how many people, probably close to 100 folks that participated in that. And those are really effective in bringing together the various agencies and jurisdictions to coordinate efforts, get on the same page. We had another cooperator’s call that happened yesterday with various agencies.

[00:02:09] Presenter: Commissioner Heather Buch:

[00:02:11] Heather Buch (Lane County, commissioner): I just wanted to touch base and talk a little bit about the flooding that occurred over the weekend. My district was hit particularly hard, which it tends to just do that in all events. All weather-related events. The geographic area just lends itself to that.

[00:02:28] But there was a significant landslide on Shoreview Drive. And there are our aerial videos of that. It’s now open, but it was really significant and the McKenzie area is susceptible to this, especially when there has been some kind of clearing. And of course the trees have been cleared alongside the highway up there. So I was actually surprised that nothing occurred up there.

[00:02:59] But the flooding in Cottage Grove and Marcola were most significant. There were two Level 1 evacuation notices in both of those areas. There were apartment complexes in both South Lane as well as over off West 11th that their first floors were flooded. So there’s a significant amount of property damage going on and being assessed at the moment out there.

[00:03:27] There was a shelter that was opened in Cottage Grove. It hosted about a half dozen folks, generally those that were unhoused. But they weren’t sure how many people would show up because some of these apartment complexes weren’t sure people would have another place to go. The Red Cross was called in to help, and they usually help with vouchers to stay in a hotel, and that kept a lot of people out of the shelters.

When it comes to these kinds of events, it didn’t elevate to an emergency declaration. This was a question that I asked early on Sunday morning, just to see, because I hear what’s happening in my district, but I don’t necessarily know what’s happening around the state at the exact same time. Pictures were flowing in. Some places were exceptionally hit, and they’re generally low-lying homes near rivers and waterways.

[00:04:23] And when things come to our board, when we talk about potential development, what happened over the weekend was a prime example of why I generally do not vote for building in a floodway or certain floodplains, because of the photos coming in of these homes being washed out.

[00:04:44] It takes a lot of time and personnel. The Sheriff’s Office was doing a lot of work. The fire chiefs were doing a lot of work, trying to get people to safety. Luckily, we didn’t have any deaths, but Douglas County did. Somebody was actually washed away and drowned. And we think a lot about the preparedness that we do for wildfire, but really in our community, I don’t think we’re prepared necessarily for floods and flood events, like we have become accustomed to in wildfire events, and we need to be.

[00:05:22] We don’t know when these things are going to happen. We don’t know when an atmospheric river is going to hit us. And an atmospheric river, for those that are really unaware, is just a river in the sky that’s eventually going to just come down on our community and fill up those waterways. And it creates so much property damage.

And I do get wildly concerned about the safety of our public who lives in those areas.

[00:05:53] So I just want to share that perspective to the group. I think it’s important that we contemplate this when we’re talking about… emergency management preparedness in the future and what we’ve learned over this event, what worked well and what we can continue to work on.

[00:06:10] Presenter: She also shared news about a new statewide Emergency Preparedness Advisory Council. Commissioner Heather Buch:

[00:06:17] Heather Buch (Lane County, commissioner): I’m on the state’s Emergency Preparedness Advisory Council, which is a state agency committee that advises the governor on emergency preparedness. It’s relatively new; they started it when they transferred the Oregon Office of Emergency Management into its own department. And we have representatives from many of the state agencies as well as on the local level on the committee.

[00:06:45] I chair the committee. And we are talking about two specific items. We’re trying to figure out what we can advise by the end of 2025 to the governor that really moves the Office of Emergency Management forward. They have a laundry list of things that they need assistance with in this committee, but we can only get so much done in a year, so we are going to specifically work on the continuity of operation planning through the state as well as its integrated preparedness plan.

[00:07:17] And if anybody is curious about what that means, what our committee does on behalf of the governor for advice on these two subjects, feel free to reach out. But these two issues are important in any context of emergencies throughout the state in any kind of disaster because you need a continuity of operations plan (COOP) to work through.

[00:07:40] And you need to make sure that people are prepared and how do we get people as prepared as humanly possible.

[00:07:44] Presenter: County officials share a quick update on Lane County flooding and a preview of the work plan for the Emergency Preparedness Advisory Council.