Taskforce ready to take on potential Flower Creek ice jams

With the threat of Flower Creek creating ice jams, Lincoln County Emergency Management Agency deputy Lisa Oedewaldt and an assembled taskforce are on the lookout.

Flower Creek is the one Creek in Libby that creates an ice jam that tends to float downstream to Balsam Bridge. In 2011 and 1996, the creek created huge problems during the slight rise in temperature that Libby sees in January and February.

When the city knows that there’s a warming event coming, like there seems to be this year, they put together a taskforce that includes the Emergency Management Services, Police Department, Sheriff’s Office, City Council and County Commissioners.

Now that the city has experiance with this type of issue, it’s become more active than reactive than in 2011, during which homeowners had to stack sandbags to protect their homes from flood damage. Now, they have equipment on standby to cut the ice in case of an emergency.

For the past few weeks, the creek has been patrolled at least once per day to see it’s condition, Oedewaldt said.

Oedewaldt has been sending out emails to members of the taskforce up to three times per day on the weather forecast.

With the current weather forecast, the “worst case scenario” is averted, Oedewaldt said, but that doesn’t mean that another weather system could move in and create problems.

The creek channel was modified decades ago in order to create a straighter path through town. Bends in the stream had allowed for frequent sediment depositions so that the channel wouldn’t build up so high. The natural curves had also served to slow the stream, which flows into town directly from the mountains.