NOTN- State transportation officials say that the Back Loop Bridge will be closed to all traffic during the anticipated Glacier Lake outburst flood also known as GLOF, while Brotherhood Bridge will remain open to vehicles but closed to pedestrians for safety.
“Much like last year, we’re going to close the bridge that’s on Back Loop when the gauge level on Mendenhall Lake hits 12 feet, or at 8:30 at night if it’s predicted to go over 12 feet overnight.” Said Department of Transportation Incident Commander Travis Eckhoff, “Folks will remember last year during the flood we had some damage to an approach that totally washed the approach out on the east side of the bridge. And so, just for everyone’s safety, we’re going to go ahead and close that bridge once it hits 12 feet, and we’ll open it back up once our engineers have had a chance to go and inspect the bridge to make sure everything’s okay.”
Engineers will inspect the bridge before reopening it once water levels subside.
Eckhoff urged residents to heed evacuation boundaries, avoid driving through floodwater and sign up for alerts at 511alaska.gov and with the City and Borough of Juneau.
Drone flights will also monitor infrastructure during the event.
“When the basin releases we’ll be putting out a temporary flight restriction for a specific area. So we advise you don’t fly your drones in that area. We’ll be posting that on our socials. There will be drones in the sky, monitoring important infrastructure and HESCO barriers.” Echkoff said.
