Are You Prepared?

WAITSBURG - Waits­burg City Public Works Di­rector Dan Katsel points to a long, vertical gauge painted on the concrete structure under the Main Street bridge across the Touchet.

Against a white back­ground, the river's ever- changing water level is in­dicated in black, one foot at a time. It starts at about the 1 and runs all the way up to the 11, with a red mark at the 8 - flood stage. On Tuesday, the level was below one foot. But last winter, the river reached six feet, and Katsel, who monitors the Touchet and the Coppei for their wa­ter volume and speed, alerted then-Mayor Markeeta Little Wolf. But the waters receded almost as quickly as they had risen, and any danger to the city quickly subsided. Had the level continued to rise, a carefully documented sequence of events would have been set into motion to alert Waitsburg residents of the threat to their town now under Mayor Walt Gobel. The possibility of flooding has come up again this year as local emergency manage­ment officials predict winter conditions that could mimic those of 1996. If high snows and freezing temperatures are followed too quickly by a warm Chinook that brings rain, the ground will not be able to absorb the volume, and Katsel will get a warning from the county's emergency management office. He'll then begin to watch both the level and the speed with which the two rivers rise. If the Touchet hits the five or six-foot mark and keeps going up a foot every 15 minutes, he will call the mayor. For the shorter, more unpredictable Coppei, the "alarm" rate is a foot every fiveminutes.

After the 1996 flood, the most oft-repeated complaint among Waitsburg residents was that they didn't know the flood waters were coming or they may have been better prepared.

They have plenty of warn­ing this time. Not only has the city sent out a letter to all households explaining what they need to help survive the first 72 hours of a flooding event, but if the waters climb toward flood stage, and the mayor decides to declare an emergency, the noon siren will sound at a quicker pulse to indicate the unusual alarm conditions, and resources staged in preparation of the event will come into play. City hall will become Waitsburg's incident com­mand center and Katsel its commander. Residents will be able to tune their radios to one of two local stations issuing updates on the situation every half hour: KONA 610 AM, KUJ 1420 AM, KTEL 1490 AM, 105.3 FM, 106.9 FM, 103.5 FM and KGTS 91.3 FM. That's why, among such obvious items as fresh water, unfilledsand bags and plastic sheeting now available from city hall, residents should have a battery-operated radio in case the power goes out. Area readers of the Times should have received an Emer­gency Preparedness Calendar inserted last week by the county's Emergency Manage­ment Department. It includes a number of tips for residents in flood-prone communities. "We'll be pretty much on our own for at least the first day," City Clerk Randy Hinchliffe said.

If the Touchet River floods in Waitsburg, Walla Walla likely will flood as well, and emergency responders will have their hands full down­stream.

Plus, if any or all of the city's four bridges are out or submerged, it will be difficult if not impossible for outside aid to reach Waitsburg when it's needed most.

A power outage is less likely this time, since Pacific Power moved its Waitsburg substation, inundated in 1996, to higher ground, Katsel said. The wastewater treatment plant is in a higher location as well, and homes were removed on both sides of the Touchet to cre­ate an initial flood zone buffer, Hinchliffe said. But anything is possible in an emergency, so a gas-powered generator is on the residential preparedness list.

In case of a flood, resourc­es will be allocated based on the areas under threat.

All local first responders already here will be one hand. The Red Cross and Salvation Army will be alerted. The basement of the Presbyterian Church and the grade school cafeteria will be opened as emergency shelters. The firestation will be an aid station. The city has 70 cubic yards of sand stored at the Fair­grounds, enough for at least 2,500 of the 20,000 sand bags the city has in reserve. Sand­bagging

stations will be set up for the labor-intensive process of filling them. Residents who want to volunteer can sign up at City Hall. But people in and around town don't have to wait that long to make a difference, city officials said. The most im­portant thing they can do now is get prepared for a flood event ahead of time. That means obtaining the items on the city's preparedness list, particularly the empty bags and sheeting, since city offi­cials will have their hands full during an actual emergency. For people who want to volunteer now, that may mean helping Katsel build bag filling stations made of upside-down road cones inside a wooden frame, a project he said may be a suitable one for high school seniors. To have at least four of those stations ready to go would be ideal, he said.

Property owners with land near the rivers can berm the portions they want to protect, and they can clear dead or lean­ing trees threatening to fall into the water to prevent the stream­beds from getting clogged (removing fallen trees from the river is legally restricted).

For business owners down­town, it may mean the con­struction of protective barriers between their buildings and the sandbags designed to keep out the floodwaters. They should also buy the plastic sheeting and plenty of empty sandbags. Some collabora­tion among building owners, particularly those who share walls, may also make sense since flood barriers should overlap to be effective. Former city councilman Leroy Cunningham, who is also a co-owner in the Whoop Em Up Hollow Cafe building, said it might even be good to develop a plan to pre-assign volunteer responsibilities in case of a flood, something not incorporated in the city's current flood response plan (which deals exclusively with government responsibilities).

Although city official said emergency drills, like the one held at the BMX track earlier this year, typically draw little interest from local residents, Cunningham said residents and business owners themselves can take the initiative to col­laborate on preplanning and perhaps even the revival of a flood district to pursue govern­ment funding or seek taxation for dike improvements and other flood mitigation efforts. If nothing else, having a flood district in place would make it easier to get federal monies for mitigation after another emergency. One idea Cunningham and Katsel agreed would be an efficient way to better protect downtown is the placement of large concrete blocks (ecol­ogy blocks) just inside the edge of the Touchet River levy from the Preston Avenue bridge to the Main Street bridge. The movable blocks could be strung along the en­tire length of Preston Park as a defense against a rising river. "We need to get organized," Cunningham said about the possibility of business owners, property owners and residents to work together in short-term and long-term planning. "We need to start talking." For more details on what you can do to get ready, visit www.cityofwaitsburg.com under flood preparedness.