In the event that a tree fell into the forest, and no one is around to listen to it, will it sound?
Perhaps that’s better reserved for the philosophers. However, if a plethora of trees fell off the mountain and fall into the ocean, who would discover about the first?
in the remote Southeast Alaska, that would include pilots and mariners. These were among the first ones to notice the effects of a massive landslide in LeConte Bay in the last week of September. Personnel from the nearby ranger district, located in Petersburg did not know that it was even happening.
The Tongass National Forest spans 16.7 million acres. It is most expansive National Forest in the United States. There’s plenty to keep in mind.
Doug Riemer is the owner of Nordic Air, a Petersburg-based charter flight company. He was flying the tour of LeConte Bay when he noticed the obvious signs of sliding.
“Mostly it’s just wood all over the place,” said Riemer. “This slide was quite striking because it didn’t fall in one place. It brought a number of trees down, and it tore all branches off of them and took the bark off of them, and all that and sprayed trees everywhere.”
The debris is danger to your health. The floating wood could cause damage to and even cause the sinking of small vessels or marine infrastructure. Glorianne Wollen is Petersburg’s harbormaster. She claims she and her crew are receiving reports about the slide from vessels heading north throughout the week. They’re now trying to get as much debris as they can before it could cause a blockage in the Wrangell Narrows, which are in the city’s middle.
“It was mostly huge massive root wads” Wollen said. Wollen. “We were aware of something that broke loose, because there were dirt, sand, rocks and things that were connected. We ended in observing it and reacting in the same way it does.”
Landslides are a concern when they occur even in remote regions. Climate changes and the consequent warmer, wetter climate make them more frequent across Southeast Alaska.
Brian Bezenek is a meteorologist working for the National Weather Service in Juneau. He says Southcentral-Southeast has seen record-breaking rains in the last few weeks, and it’s probably no coincidence that the slide happened when it did.
“There were a tidal river moving across the south-central Panhandle at that time,” said Bezenek. “It happened to be to be a wet end to the week across the entire region. Petersburg has reported 4.47 inches on 21st, which according to the data is the wettest day recorded for that day. In the past 2 days we’ve had 7.02 inches.”
To put it in context, the typical monthly rainfall in the Petersburg region amounts to 14.35 inches. The area received half that within a single weekend.
Bezenek states that the torrential rains will likely be weighing down for some time to be. There’s no way to tell how long it will take every bit of debris be eliminated.
