Flooding Closes I-15 Swollen Snake River Swamps Farmland Across Eastern Idaho

The main north-south freeway through eastern Idaho was cut off Friday by the swollen Snake River creeping across farm communities as record amounts of water continued to be released from upstream.

“We want to keep the roads open, but we obviously lost that battle on the interstate,” said Rick Just, spokesman for the state oversight of volunteer efforts in Blackfoot.

“I don’t know if Friday the 13th will be the worst for Blackfoot, but the 14th and 15th will be a little dicey,” Just said.

More than a dozen homes in one low-lying area of Blackfoot already had floodwater inside. Up to 1,000 people filled sandbags around homes, schools, farms and churches throughout the city. Inmates from jails were called out to shovel sand.

“People are so good,” said Joe Dahle, president of the Blackfoot South Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “It’s been a faith-builder in humanity because every faith is out here with everyone working together.”

No one has been injured yet because of the flooding.

Interstate 15 was shut down by rising water between Blackfoot and Shelley on Friday morning. U.S. 91 east of the river remained open, but tractor-trailer rigs created gridlock waiting to drive on the two-lane highway.

Despite the dikes to protect the freeway, floodwaters softened its roadbed, making travel unsafe.

Nearby on Rose Road, elementary school teacher Dennis Jacobson’s home was surrounded by 5-foot-high walls of dirt and sandbags. His father lived there in June 1976 when the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Teton Dam collapsed, creating a deluge and flooding the home with 3 feet of water.

“I have no second thoughts,” Jacobson said, “and I have flood insurance.”

Another bridge collapsed earlier after raging water eroded its pilings, and several hundred people remained out of their homes in the Jefferson County communities of Roberts and Menan for a second day after water punched a 100-foot whole in a dike.

Guillermina Navarro, 36, and her two children were forced from their trailer in Roberts when the dike broke.

“I don’t want to move because we have no place to go,” said Navarro as she sat in the Red Cross shelter at Rigby High School with dozens of other Hispanics who have become victims of the flood.

But B.J. Berlin had no plans to become a victim. Berlin owns Jack Daniels Restaurant and Saloon in a 105-year-old building that withstood the Teton Dam disaster. His is one of the few businesses still open in Roberts.

“Some of the locals are coming over to have a beer and eat and just have some normalcy,” he said.

The Bureau of Reclamation raised the outflow from Palisades Reservoir upstream on the Wyoming border from a record 37,000 cubic feet per second to 39,000 early Friday. In 30 hours, the higher flows will hit Blackfoot, where the river was already running at more than three times normal.

“It looks like we will be able to hold it at 39,000 cfs,” Reclamation engineer Ted Day said. “We’re not getting that much precipitation. But if we see that turn around on the gauges downstream, that may not be the case.”

The higher flows reached more than 170 miles downstream, flooding basements of homes in low-lying areas in communities like Heyburn in south-central Idaho. Officials in two downstream counties with major reservoirs within their boundaries - Power and Minidoka - declared their own emergencies.

“We’ve never seen this kind of water in this river before, in history,” State Sen. Denton Darrington of Declo said. “Sewers, basements, up and down that river - all kinds of things we can’t predict will occur. We don’t have a clue what that water is going to do.”

Day said the amount of rain and snowmelt flowing into Palisades have started to drop. The 1.4-million acrefoot reservoir filled Friday morning.

The Heise gauge 35 miles below the dam was at 42,800 cfs with the water flowing into the Snake from tributaries below Palisades. Flood stage at Heise is 24,000 cfs. Some homes there and in Swan Valley halfway between Heise and the dam were flooded.

“We are preparing for the worst,” Marsi Woody of the Army National Guard said. The guard was airlifting thousands more sandbags to the area and was protecting levees with heavy equipment.

A number of roads and bridges were closed in the area, complicating the movement of manpower and supplies.

“It’s a threat, but I sure appreciate the spirit of the sheriffs and the folks who are in charge over here and have to take care of it,” Lt. Gov. Butch Otter said as he toured the flood area with Adjutant Gen. John Kane of the National Guard. “It looks like if they have the spirit to handle it and the will to handle it, it will be all right.”