Cda Lake, Spokane River Recede Officials Advise Residents To Get The Facts, Not Panic

When high-water fever hits, rumors spread faster than ripples on a swollen bay.

At the Kootenai County Disaster Services command center in Bayview, sheriff’s Capt. Ben Wolfinger learned Tuesday morning from one resident that the dam at Noxon was about to burst.

Downriver at Albeni Falls, dam manager Bob Schloss said residents along the Pend Oreille River called him all morning, convinced water was going to rise another 3 feet and swamp their homes.

Both were fantastic stories, the men agreed. Potential calamities even. But neither was true.

“Rumors are running rampant,” Wolfinger said. “I guess my best advice is to talk to somebody in the know before we create a panic.”

It would be foolish to forget about lingering snowpack in the hills - and the torrent it could unleash, Schloss said. But it doesn’t do any good to go crazy.

The facts are less alarming: waters on Lake Coeur d’Alene and the Spokane River are already receding, and Lake Pend Oreille showed signs of cresting well below dire estimates.

Now, official say the lake will likely crest 3 feet above summer levels - 2 feet less than original predictions.

“We’re scaling way back,” said Wolfinger. “With all our projections and the weather, we’ll be shutting the command post down completely tomorrow.”

Even though the outlook is positive, the lake continued to rise at Bayview, submerging hundreds of docks and yanking a few off their pilings.

“I’ve got two docks at my house right now, but I know who they belong to, so I’ll have to give them back,” joked Bonner County Sheriff Chip Roos.

Still, Roos said the area has suffered little damage. Most residents are calling about careless boaters causing wakes that break sandbag walls or damage docks.

Many area streams and rivers, including the Clark Fork, have actually dropped. Priest River, Pack River and the Kootenai River in Boundary County are all at lower levels than earlier in the week.

“The news is encouraging but we don’t know if everything will go back up,” Roos said. “It all depends on the weather.”

At Harbor Island near Coeur d’Alene - where hundreds of high school students stacked sandbags on Monday - water receded 2 or 3 feet. Tuesday, debris piled against the bags at the private boat ramp dried in the late-afternoon sun and Army National Guard personnel operated a chain of eight pumps that helped empty backyards.

“It looks like one of my docks is busted,” said Phat Du, who lives at 6325 Harbor Island. Du, who bought his home in December, said he also doesn’t have phone service - a phone jack that extended to the dock is submerged and has shorted out the entire system.

St. Maries residents were breathing easier after water fell from a crest of 38.98 feet on Saturday night to 37.48 feet on Tuesday morning.

Army Corps of Engineers flood expert John Coyle said that repair work on the Cherry Creek Dike was finished before noon Monday. But even when it was breached three days ago, damage was minimal.

“It was riddled with beaver dams and beaver holes,” Coyle said. “So we’re reinforcing wherever we can.”

The rest of the dikes near the Benewah County town were saturated and had sprung leaks in some places, but Coyle said engineers were watching them closely and expected them to hold.

Across the lake at Carlin Bay, water that lapped at the Carlin Bay Resort’s concrete steps on Monday had dropped several feet by Tuesday afternoon. One of the resort’s employees, Carla McCaffery, said she still worries that rain or hot weather like last week might cause Lake Coeur d’Alene to crest again.

She also worries about debris for boaters.

“I’ve seen huge tree stumps float past,” she said. “One looked like a small island. Docks float by. Yesterday I saw a canoe.”

Officials in Boundary County were also worried about debris problems at the Moyie Dam. A cable system used to catch debris was not working properly Monday, but has since been repaired. The dam is not in danger, said commissioner Murleen Skeen.

Milo Creek in Kellogg has been plugged from Market to Portland streets for a week.

Kellogg city council member Billie Irwin said folks here are concerned that water could burst through the pipe at other locations and potentially block access to the town of Wardner. “The streets are destroyed,” Irwin said. “It’s broken the blacktop. It’s underneath the blacktop. It’s not a street - it’s now a river.”

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MEMO: Cut in the Spokane edition.