On Thursday, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski stood on Ketchikan’s Third Avenue Bypass in a reflective safety vest with local officials. All around her, crews with heavy machinery worked to clear layers of mud and debris from the roadway. She looked up the collapsed slope and down at the devastation below from last week’s deadly landslide.
“After all these years and nothing happened – you got rain, you got wind – but now all of a sudden, this decides to let loose in a way that is so dramatic,” Murkowski said.
RELATED: Ketchikan residents describe a chaotic scene in the hours after fatal landslide
Local officials and those leading response efforts told Murkowski that the cleanup and geological surveying efforts after the Aug. 25 slide would likely take a long time. The senator said she thinks crews must still be running on adrenaline at this point.
“And you know it’s probably not going to be until everyone’s able to take a deep breath that you begin to feel pretty, pretty low,” Murkowski told those leading the clean-up efforts.
She said she understood that many of the men and women working among the debris knew Sean Griffin, the man who died in the slide. Some of them were his coworkers. Griffin was an employee with the city’s public works department. He was clearing storm drains in the area when the landslide struck. Murkowski said the delegation and the state want to offer material and emotional support.
“This is really hard on a small community,” Murkowski said. “To lose somebody, and particularly somebody that’s a local guy with a family here and one of your one of your coworkers. So this is really hard for us.”
Murkowski told officials that she would work to secure federal dollars for rebuilding efforts and put longer-term investments in place for monitoring and preventing future landslides. She didn’t specify where that potential funding was coming from.
It’s also not clear whether the Federal Emergency Management Association will make federal resources available. The state of Alaska has activated its Individual Assistance program to provide relief funds for Ketchikan’s landslide survivors.
Down the hill, there is even more debris on Second Avenue where the slide smashed through the residential neighborhood.
Murkowski walked into one of the houses adjacent to the slide with Fire Chief Rick Hines. The exterior looks fine. It was not hit by any of the mud and debris like its neighbor. But the inside is trashed. Insulation and air ducts hang from the ceiling beneath buckled support beams. Hines said it didn’t experience a physical impact, but the sheer force of the air moving down the mountain with the tons of mud and rock nearly caved the roof in.
“I can’t think – I can’t imagine the intensity of that,” Murkowski said.
“Right?” Hines replied. “So when you ask ‘Is this house totaled?’ My answer is probably going to be yes.”
A few feet away, a house lies tipped on its side among the knots of downed trees. It was hurled sideways into the house across the street. There were people inside that flipped house when it was thrown from its foundation. But they walked away.
Murkowski echoed what many have said in the days after this slide: It’s a miracle the death toll wasn’t higher.
Murkowski has a deep connection to Ketchikan – it’s where she was born. As we passed an evacuated home a couple of blocks from the slide, Murkowski pointed out a light green house.
“My cousin Jenny grew up right there,” she said. “Yeah, it’s just kind of a normal street. It’s not a dangerous street. There’s nothing crazy going on here.”
Ketchikan Mayor Dave Kiffer told the senator that it wasn’t just property that was destroyed – the slide shattered the community’s sense of security.
“And also just the general peace of mind that we’ve had here for decades is destroyed, and that’s the reality,” he said.
Murkowski finished her visit with a trip to the emergency shelter at Ketchikan High School, where she met with families who were displaced by the slide. It was not clear Friday afternoon when the remaining evacuated residents will be able to return to their homes.
State Individual Assistance and Temporary Housing programs are accepting applications from “survivors with damages or emergency expenses” related to the landslide, the city and borough said. Registration is available by phone at (844) 445-7131 or online at https://ready.alaska.gov/Recovery/IA Additional updates will be provided at https://www.kgbak.us/1098/3rd-Avenue-Bypass-Landslide, authorities said. Text alerts are available through Nixle by texting 99901 to 888-777.
