Juneau: August 12, 2026 Unified Command GLOF Press Briefing

We're still getting set up here in the briefing room, but we'll be back on in 3 minutes.

Okay, good morning everyone. Welcome and thank you for being here today. My name is Ashley Heimbigner. I'm the Communications Director for the City and Borough of Juneau, City and Borough of Juneau, and functioning as the Public Information Officer for the 2026 Juneau Glacial Lake Outburst Flood. I want to start by thanking all of our media partners and agency partners for being here today and for all of your work too and collaboration on helping to make sure that our community is safe and informed leading up to and during this annual hazard.

Um, we do have quite a few items on the agenda today and want to make sure we have lots of time for questions towards the end. A couple housekeeping items for our participating media, especially those online. We will take questions immediately after the National Weather Service briefing, but then we will take all other questions not related to that briefing at the end. Um, for those online, please feel free to put your questions in the Q&A section of the Zoom link. And we will, we will address those at the end of the briefing again, unless specifically related to the National Weather Service briefing.

Quick overview, we'll start with the update from the National Weather Service, have a quick safety briefing, and then we'll move into an incident overview from our incident commanders, followed by operational updates from our operations teams here. I'm always humbled at the level of collaboration and participation from, uh, agencies at all levels of government. Uh, just a quick overview of those that are here in the room today. We have the City and Borough of Juneau, Tlingit and Haida. We have the U.S. Coast Guard Sector Southeast.

We have, um, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Alaska District and Pacific Ocean Division. We have the American Red Cross. We have Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. Uh, we also have, of course, the National Weather Service. The Juneau School District, and the U.S. Forest Service just in this room right now.

That's not including all the other agencies that are working with us behind the scenes. So we look forward to answering your questions today. We recognize that many folks probably didn't get much sleep last night, and tonight might be an even longer night, so we want to make sure that everyone has the information they need to prepare for the, the 24 hours ahead. So with that, I will pass it to the National Weather Service and Nicole Fleurant. Good morning, everyone.

I actually said my name is Nicole Barron. I'm the warning coordination leader office for the National Weather Service forecast office here in Juneau. We issued the flood warning yesterday afternoon for an expected crest tomorrow morning between 16.1 and 16.6 feet. Rough timeline of when that crest would happen is Thursday morning between 5:00 AM and 9:00 AM. And we are seeing a steady rate of rise on the lake gauge right now.

And the basin is dropping rapidly. It's dropped about 25 feet since the release started. Looking ahead, we expect major flood stage later overnight after midnight. And that will last for approximately an 8-hour period. Major flood stage is 14 feet on the lake gauge.

And for everyone to be aware that while the lake gauge may crest, it'll take about an hour to an hour and a half for lower levels of the river to also crest. So allow for some lag further downstream. In the event, unlikely event, of a Hesco barrier breach during that major flood stage, our office would coordinate with the Unified Command and issue a flash flood warning. If you did get a flash flood warning, all of your phones would go off for that if you were in the evacuation area, and we would ask that you shelter in place if you were in the evacuation area during an unlikely flash flood warning event. Happy to take any questions.

Any questions in the room regarding the National Weather Service update?

We don't appear to have any online. Thank you, Nicole.

Next up, we have a safety briefing from Ken Murphy of Alaska Shoreline Transportation and Public Facilities. Thank you, Ken. Thank you.

Morning. Yesterday we talked about complacency. We talked about the dangers of water. I got you all amped up. Today my message is different.

Slow is fast. Slow down. Take your time. If you're evacuating, thank you. Before you leave a room, look around.

Take the extra time to do those things. I know I've left my laptop computer. I've left the power supply. Take your time. Everybody breathe.

You'll feel yourself ramping up a little bit. Take a breath. If you have somebody else that you're dealing with or responsible for, Make them slow down too. We're going to do this together as a team. I know we're prepared for this.

Please evacuate. Flow is fast. Thank you. Thank you, Ken. And now I'd like to invite our Unified Command, Brian O'Shaughnessy, Sabrina Grubitz, and Captain Janine Adolly.

Thank you, Ashley.

Like Ashley said to start us out, I want to express gratitude to all the different agencies who are working on, on this issue and responding to this event. It's really incredible to see so many different entities at different levels of government, local, state, tribal, and federal, all pulling together for for one problem. And I don't know that I've seen it before other than last year. So there's something about this event, while it is terrible, it does bring our levels of government together in an incredible way. With that partnership, through the next 24 hours, you'll see our crews out in the field staging, working together to ready pumps, to do final inspections on barriers, and make all the final preparations that we need to do to make sure that we are ready to flood fight and move through this event.

The most important thing that the public can do to help us be ready, and the number one thing that I want to communicate, is please evacuate. We're asking folks to finish their evacuation preparations and procedures by 3:00 PM this afternoon as, as they move through this period. Capital Transit will be running until 5:00 PM this afternoon to assist with anyone who's utilizing Capital Transit in their evacuation plan. Plans, but please complete your evacuation process and then get out of that neighborhood by 3 PM this afternoon. Evacuating is absolutely the best way to keep yourselves, your neighbors, and first responders safe as we respond to this flood.

Thank you. Thank you, Ryan. Again, Ginu Nidolny, Commander of Coast Guard Forces here in Southeast Alaska. The UC, we maintain readiness to respond A couple areas of emphasis that I wanted to do is, as a reminder, major flood stage and the peak crest is expected to be tonight, so at darkness. That challenges our ability to, to see, to see risks.

The best thing this community and the citizens can do to maintain their safety is to evacuate as the city has recommended. Again, that's an evacuation request by 3— no later than 3 PM today. And as you are leaving, please also look to secure any household hazardous waste or fuel tanks if you have them on your property. Ensure that those are strapped down. Your support greatly reduces the overall risk of this event.

Thank you.

Hello, Sabrina Grubitz, Klinkit, Public Safety, part of the UC. Again, reiterating what the other unified commanders are stating. Working together has been a very phenomenal opportunity to support each other, to support the community, come together. You can see that we have a wide swath of individuals throughout the community, and we've all come to the same conclusion that evacuation is the best way to keep yourself safe. So we do ask you to heed those suggestions and those requests from Unified Command in this response.

Additionally, as other— as our other UC has mentioned, getting yourself prepared and evacuation, ensuring you have a go bag, additional medication, irreplaceable documents, protecting regalia and other items that you cannot replace easily, making sure you pack those and caring for your animals and pets as well. Thank you.

And one more thing to add, and that's just I wanted to share two critical resources that are available to the public. And these are both on the door hangers that went out to every home in the evacuation advisory area yesterday. But if folks have questions about how to evacuate or they need assistance or really any questions related to flood information, please call the flood information hotline at 907-500-0890. And please sign up for emergency alerts. You can do that by texting the message CVJ to the number 38276.

Thank you.

Thank you so much to our Incident Command. I just wanted to add, obviously, please heed the message to evacuate the area for those that reside or, or recreate in the area. We also want to please ask any visitors to the community or those that live outside of the community to please stay away, give our residents space while they prepare for this really stressful time, and to avoid heading into that evacuation zone. You can find a map of the evacuation zone evacuation zone on our website. Please steer clear of that area until the waters have receded.

Next up is Denise Koch, Operations Section Chief and Director of Engineering and Public Works for the City and Borough of Juneau.

Thank you, Ashley. So I wanted to report on a few different aspects. One is pump operations. All the pumps are operational as of this time. We continue to have crews.

We have dedicated pump crews who are monitoring the pumps. The second item I want to touch on is HESCO barriers. We have HESCO barrier forward operating observers who are in the area who continue to monitor the HESCO barriers at this point on foot. We were aware that there was a warming fire near the HESCO barriers in the Don area. We have sent our crews to that area.

They have evaluated the HESCO barriers. There is no damage to the HESCO barriers in that location. The second item area that we spent some special attention on is going back to the HESCO barriers near Clinton and Vintage. We know that there are potentially some encampments in that area that keep popping up. There are some knife slits to the face of the HESCO barriers.

We have seen those. We are in the process of patching them. And then the last item I just wanted to reiterate is Capital Transit will— they're going to be in the area until 5:00 PM. And the reason for that is we just want to give people who rely on Capital Transit, maybe they don't have a vehicle, that extra time to be able to leave the area using transit. But 5:00 PM is when Capital Transit routes will no longer be operating in the evacuation area, and we will post some information online that makes it clear with maps on, you know, how the changes to the routes will look.

Thank you.

Thank you, Director Koch. And then I'd like to invite Travis Eckhoff, Incident Commander for Alaska DOT. Hi, good morning everyone. Travis Eckhoff, Incident Commander for the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities. I want to start off by echoing what the Unified Commander has already said.

Please evacuate the area if you're in the evacuation zone. The Department of Transportation Public Facilities has switched over to response mode, so we're now completely focused on our operations. We have placed that temporary flight restriction, so that is now in place through the FAA. That's been up since 8:00 AM this morning. The reason we are doing that early is so that we can do test flights and all of our planning so that we can make sure that everything's going to run smoothly during the flooding event.

We are sticking to our plan, so we will close the back loop bridge at 8:30 PM tonight, and we will be closing the pedestrian paths on the Brotherhood Bridge around 5:15, or when the lake gauge hits 10 feet. Thank you.

Thank you, Travis. And with that, I'd like to open it to questions. I'm going to start with one that came in online from Jazz Garrett of the Juneau Independent. Question for CBJ. I think this is for you, Director Koch.

You say there are still final preparations and inspections being made in the next 24 hours for barriers and pumps. What still needs to be done at this point after ensuring they were ready yesterday, or is this all ongoing maintenance?

This is all ongoing maintenance. So as of yesterday, The HESCO barriers were ready, and when I, when I say that, I mean they were all constructed, all openings were closed, all of the drainage structures through the HESCO barriers had been inspected and reviewed, all the one-way valves worked, and I think in the rare cases that they didn't, they were plugged. So that's what I was referring to yesterday, but we will continue to monitor on foot the HESCO barriers as part of our HESCO forward operating observer task until we hit 14-foot lake stage. And that's when we'll pull people out of the field and they will switch to relying on the wonderful DOT air support that we are receiving with drones. But they're just continuing to walk the barriers because we hear things about, you know, people report potential concerns when we find out about a warming fire that's near HESCOs.

The HESCOs in that location were fine yesterday, but there were— between then and now, there was a warming fire in that area. So we go back to that area and assess if there was any damage and make any repairs.

Thank you. Is there any questions in the room? Corinne? Yeah, is the Mendenhall Visitor Center now closed? I'll let the— invite Mike Downs or Barbara Anderson, the foresters.

Yeah, thank you for that question. We will be closing the Mendenhall Visitor Center this afternoon to commensurate with the Capitol Transit closure. So we're going to be closing that area around 4:00 and allowing time for visitors to leave that area. And still catch Capitol Transit. We closed the west side yesterday.

The campground was evacuated yesterday, and the west side of, um, Benninghall Lake is, is closed to access as of this morning, as is the, the entire MGRA will be closed by this evening to visitors.

The next question comes from Eric Stone, Alaska Public Media for KTOO. We—. Question is, we know some folks in the flood zone are planning to stay. Others may still be considering whether to leave. What would you say to them?

I might invite our UCs to come up.

We've said it a number of times, evacuating is absolutely the best way to keep yourselves your neighbors, and first responders safe during this event. We're tremendously confident in the HESCO barriers. We're tremendously confident in the pumps that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has provided. None of this is worth betting your life. Please evacuate.

Please take heed to that advisory and leave the area when it comes time. Brian, I might have you stay up there. I think it might be helpful for people to understand where the risk comes from and, and what could happen?

In the event of a HESCO failure, like I said, we are tremendously confident in the infrastructure that's been put in place through all of our partnerships, but in the event of a HESCO failure, folks would only have minutes before the area could be inundated. This could potentially be a truly massive amount of water coming through, and, and we would work with the Weather Service to ensure that flash flood warning was issued. But folks would not have time to evacuate. That flash flood warning product would contain the instructions of shelter in place. Many of the homes in the area are only one story.

Even in a two-story event, this is very fast-moving water. There's no amount of water that folks can walk through or drive through in this flood scenario that is considered safe. Utilities and other hazards can be hidden underneath the water. And it can only take a couple of inches of water to move a vehicle off the road. The amount of water coming through, and just again to restate this, the amount of water coming into the neighborhood in a HESCO breach scenario is truly massive.

We're talking about tens of thousands of cubic feet of water per second. And just tearing through, water is incredibly destructive, and we would really, really hope that everybody would evacuate.

Thank you, Brian. Is there a question in the room? Another online from Becky Moore of the Associated Press.

We've been told previously there are about 1,900 residences within the evacuation advisory area. Do we know how many people live in those homes? With the encouragement to evacuate, do we— do you have an estimate for how many people might evacuate, I believe, is the question.

So based on our occupancy, our occupancy data from the most recent census, we anticipate there's an average of around 2.5 folks per dwelling. We have around 2,000 residences in the area, so that would come out to around 5,000 folks. And that's a total guess, again, based on census occupancy data.

And Ashley, could you please restate the second part of the question? Do we have any idea how many people might evacuate?

We do not have active tracking of who's evacuated or who hasn't evacuated. And again, this is one of the primary reasons that we're asking folks to self-evacuate before the event. In the event of a HESCO breach, our— one of our top priorities would be accounting for everyone who may have stayed behind. The more people that there are that have, that have made that choice, the more difficult that work will be, the more time it will take to get to folks who are experiencing real-life emergencies and need that assistance. So again, the best way to keep yourselves and your neighbors safe is to evacuate when it comes time.

Mari. And Mari Kanagi with Anchorage Daily News. How many slots are available at the Foyuk Tribe gym for evacuees? Do you want to speak that, or I can invite Lauren? Yeah, we have Lauren Jones from the American Red Cross with us, so I'll let them speak.

Could you answer Mari's question? We also have a question online about what kind of accommodations are available and how many people stayed last night. I'll repeat those if you Loren Joseph with the American Red Cross. We established a shelter at Floyd Grind Gym last night. We had a family of 6 overnight.

We have trailer supplies on site for 50. The gym probably maxes out around 75 people. We could get a little bit more if needed. But it is a gymnasium. It is open.

We also have accommodations for pets. So if you're— you have animals, we have an area we can put cats and dogs separate from their owners. We will have people taking care of those animals from Grateful Dogs, a group here in Juneau that's volunteering for that. So, and we are, we are open and we'll be there. Okay.

Okay. I think, I think that answers all of our questions online. Yes, Corinne. My question is for the state and maybe Jeremy can answer. And any update on a state disaster declaration?

Jeremy Zedick.

Good morning. Jeremy Zedick, Public Information Officer with the State of Alaska's Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. We don't have a disaster declaration at this time. This is really a unique situation in that we have a forecast that this event is going to happen. So we really look to see if this event is going to be imminent, and that's what the National Weather Service is telling us now.

We're working on that, working through that process to get that disaster declaration. So we don't have that information right now. It's up to the governor to make that determination, and we're working with him and staff to, to get that in place.

Yep. I would say that, um, it, it, it— the city and borough, general, Klinkenheida Unified Command are really doing, uh, everything that they possibly can, and that disaster declaration wouldn't change any of the activity that's taking place. Um, it's really, uh, it can activate some different different powers and different funding sources, but everything that needs to take place is taking place. And they've done a remarkable job leading up to this event and in the past years actually as well. So this is really a model of how communities should respond to these types of events.

Thank you, Jeremy. Before we wrap up, I just— well, We didn't have a representative from the Army Corps in our agenda today. I do just wanna mention that Colonel Trujillo from Army Corps Alaska District is here, and we could not be as prepared as we are today without the incredible partnership and support and time and contributions from the US Army Corps of Engineers. They truly are, while this is a primarily local response, they have become local members of our community. So we're very, very grateful to have them here on the ground with us during this event.

Uh, I do have one more question, um, from Eric Stone. It sounded like there were no changes in— this is for you, Nicole— uh, no changes in the crest forecast, height, timing, etc. Just want to double-check that that is correct.

Yes, that is correct at this time. Thank you. Um, and also want to thank the National Weather Service for their amazing resources. So that our entire community has the livestream data that the rest of us are getting as well. Well, thank you again.

I wanna reiterate, please utilize the Flood Hotline and [email protected]. We have several team members manning those 24 hours a day now. And for our media partners, please contact us at [email protected], and we have the JIC phone number, 907-419-5712. We're here to support you. With that, I think we'll wrap up so our teams can get back to this disaster response.

In terms of a briefing, we will have one again tomorrow. Timing is to be determined. We will send out invitation via email. Thank you all.