The rain hissed as it fell, pinging off the awnings of Juneau’s downtown hotels and pitting the dark surface of the harbor, where the season’s remaining cruise ships swayed. The steady September drizzle transformed the streets into streams, slanting down the city’s steep hillsides. Sarah Wallace and her partner had slogged home from work and were just starting dinner when a faint rumble began. The ground began to vibrate. The thrumming grew, crescendoing like a piano tumbling down stairs.
A neighbor dashed out of his side of the building just as a large Sitka spruce tree crashed onto the road behind him. A transformer blew. There was a flash of green sparks, and then Wallace was plunged into darkness. She scooped up her cats and ran into the night.
This is a very interesting article, as I was born at St. Ann’s Hospital in Juneau, just 2 1/2 months before the November 1936 landslide described in the article. I lived in Juneau through high school. We lived on North Franklin Street at the intersection with Fifth Street, just two blocks from St. Ann’s. My father was a doctor at the Juneau Clinic and associated with St. Ann’s, and I’m sure he treated survivors of the landslide and perhaps also the 3-year old girl described in the article.
However, I never heard the landslide mentioned in our house or by anyone else in town. I’m learning of it for the first time through this article.
In Juneau, snowslides were routine. One simply didn’t build a house in a snowslide path, which paths were marked on the sides of Mt. Juneau and Mt. Roberts by the absence of trees. Every winter, slides blocked the road to Thane south of town, but in few hours, heavy equipment cleared the road.
Landslides? No one ever mentioned them. I don’t remember any while I lived there. I was surprised to learn of the landslide risk from the studies linked to the article. Who knew? Of course, we had less rain in those days than now. Mostly, it drizzled.
There was a small wooded hill called The Knoll between downtown Juneau and the slopes of Mt. Juneau. In between The Knoll and Mt. Juneau was a stream called Gold Creek, that flowed in a deep ravine behind The Knoll past The Evergreen Bowl (now Cope Park), down into town and into the salt water of Gastineau Channel. Any snowslides down the front of Mt. Juneau went down into Gold Creek and were stopped from hitting downtown Juneau by The Knoll.
One slide was particularly memorable. We were sitting in class in high school, between Fifth and Sixth Street in downtown Juneau. It was about 3:00 pm, and the bright sun was still out on that late winter day. Our classroom looked down on Gastineau Channel, facing away from Mt. Juneau. Suddenly, it looked like a snow storm outside, a complete whiteout that lasted for several minutes. When it cleared, we could see the school grounds covered not only with several inches of snow, but also littered with twigs and branches of trees. A huge slide had come down Mt. Juneau into Gold Creek with so much snow that it flowed up over the top of The Knoll and spread out in a cloud of fluffy snow and tree branches to blanket the town. It was the only time that happened while I lived there.