Majestic but not without its challenges
Sense of Place: Understanding the Risks of Where You Live
By Susan Duncan, 4-14-08
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There are challenges of living in this breathtaking environment. Susan Duncan discusses in this continued series how similar risks that faced the pioneers decades ago are still present.
The Western landscape is brawny and majestic, offering panoramic views.
For visitors and residents alike, the appeal lies in the landforms that reflect the raw power of the forces of Nature that created them. The landforms beckon and challenge. Risk is part of the appeal. Volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, forest fires, temperature extremes, and avalanches created this landscape.
The risks they pose are still here and affect our daily lives. Have you assessed the risks of where you live and how you respond?
Yellowstone Lake is a volcanic caldera. Seismic activity, the hot pots, and geysers attest that the volcano is not dead. The lava from a former eruption went as far as Nebraska. If (or should I say when) she blows, my home (100 miles north) is not far enough away to escape harm.
Earthquakes are common in Southwest Montana. In my neighborhood, the schoolhouse at Central Park, Montana had to be rebuilt after a quake in the 1930’s. In 1959, Quake Lake (west of West Yellowstone) was formed after a 7.3 quake brought down an 80 million ton landslide to dam the Madison River. Aftershocks measured 6.5 on the Richter scale. Smaller mass failures (landslides) are not uncommon in mountainous areas.
Earthquakes — or heavy upstream runoff — can cause dam failures. Hyalite Reservoir holds 3.3 billion gallons of water for irrigation and drinking water in the mountains south of Bozeman. Most people in Gallatin County have no idea if they are at risk if it fails. I didn’t.
A recent study by a Colorado consultant predicted a wall of water 54 feet tall would hit the mouth of Hyalite Canyon, only 9 miles from the dam, within a half hour of breach. Four Corners, 18miles from the dam, would be inundated by a 30- foot wave about 90 minutes after the breach — 2800 residents are at risk between these two points. The county is looking for funds to install an early warning system to reduce the hazard.
From Four Corners, the predicted flood channel splits – going west, in the West Gallatin River channel and east, through Middle Creek and the East Gallatin River. My house is near the West Gallatin River corridor and Central Park. According to the report, Central Park, 32 miles downstream, would receive an 11-foot wave within 7 hours. My place is a half-mile from the river, but my house and buildings could experience some flooding. Travel on I-90, Jackrabbit Lane, and Highway 191 would be disrupted. Belgrade would be an island. I could be isolated for some time. For more information, check out the displays on the first floor of the Gallatin County Courthouse or contact the Gallatin County Emergency Management Office.
High water during spring runoff is a powerful force. Property rights advocates consider stream setbacks a “taking” that devalues their property. Riverfront lots sell. On the West Gallatin River, building a home near the river is hazardous. I’ve seen the river remove a concrete silo that had been at Central Park for over half a century. Our neighbors say they used to fish upstream in a grove of huge cottonwoods, many of them three to four feet in diameter. Those trees are no longer there. Rounded river rocks (loaf sized and larger) can be found 5 miles away in Belgrade. No, I would not advocate living close to this river. It is active and has always been so.
Flooding occurs in winter too. We get calls from homeowners upstream that live between the river and our irrigation ditch. Ice jams on the river force the water overland into our ditch where it floods, freezes, and causes more overland flow.
Wild fire is a natural part of the ecology of the West. Droughts increase the likelihood of wildfires. At risk, are the homeowners near public lands in the wildland-urban interface. A man from Maryland moved his family to a log home with a shake roof in a ponderosa pine forest west of Missoula. By August, news reports of forest fires convinced him that his idyllic “cabin in the woods” was a firetrap. He replaced the shake roof with steel, thinned the trees, raked up the pine needles, and moved the firewood staked against the house. He created defensible space.
Since 2006, questions have arisen. Should firefighters risk their lives to save homes that are indefensible because of location or lack of vegetation management? Should taxpayers have to pay the costs of homeowner choices about where to live? Homeowners and local communities are taking action through FireSafe Montana. For more information, contact Pat McKelvey at (406) 447-8225 or Marianne Baumberger at the Bozeman Ranger District, Gallatin National Forest.
Winter brings it’s own threats. Prepare a survival kit for your car. Be prepared for power outages at home. Fact sheets are available on-line, here.
Three times in thirty years it has been –50 degrees at my house. One January the thermometer never got above 32 degrees. I’ve run my rural mail route when it was 38 degrees below zero. Plastic shatters, electronic and mechanical equipment malfunctions (or refuses to operate at all) at those temperatures. Livestock needs wind protection, bedding for insulation, and lots of carbohydrates. People used to moving from one climate controlled environment to another (home-car-office) do not dress for prolonged exposure. One poor decision, one mis-step and wind chill and hypothermia can kill. Stick to the main roads in winter. Back roads (“short cuts”) may not be passable all year.
Heavy snowfall brings out skiers and snowmobilers. Avalanches claim lives every year. This winter, two men (I’ll call Jake and Charlie) - both experienced backcountry skiers - and Charlie’s black lab “Lucky” were skiing above Hyalite Reservoir. As a safety precaution, the two men had stayed in the trees to avoid wind-loaded slopes. Lucky was 20-30 feet ahead. As Charlie stepped out on the ridge to call Lucky back, a cornice broke under his ski.
When the cornice broke, Lucky was only a few feet away. Charlie watched in horror as Lucky fell, landing on his feet, but unable to get traction to save himself. Lucky and the cornice fell 15 feet to a steep, narrow chute, triggering an avalanche. Lucky slid downhill faster and faster and disappeared in a cloud of snow. Shaken, the men backtracked to the foot of the slide, hoping Lucky had found a point to pull himself out. Lucky was nowhere to be found. Then, they realized they were in danger, too. Still shaken by their close call,
they went home. Charlie went back the next day to look for Lucky, but couldn’t find him.
A week later, the phone rang at Charlie’s house. A family (ice fishing at Hyalite Reservoir) had found Lucky wandering around a campground – unharmed, but tired and hungry. Lucky had lived up to his name.
Skiing out of bounds, or high marking with a snowmobile are foolish risks. But even experienced, careful outdoorsmen like Charlie and Jake can get caught by chance. Technology cannot replace experience and good judgment. Check the avalanche report, know the risks, and keep alert to dangers.
Understanding the risk factors inherent in the place where you live can save your life.
Susan Duncan lives on a 76-acre irrigated farm in the Gallatin Valley of Montana that she and her husband Richard built from a fallow grain field since 1976. They raised registered and commercial cattle, sheep, and hay. Now they are niche market entrepreneurs of Dexter cattle and some produce. From 1999-2004 Susan was a country lifestyle columnist for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle “Fencelines” Section. She holds a B.S. Degree in Forestry from the University of Montana. For the last 20 years she has been an active participant in local efforts to envision a viable future and guide exploding development.
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Comments
Yellowstone lake is not a caldera. West Thumb is a caldera (about 140,000 years old) and the body of the Lake lies within the 600,000 year-old calders, but the SE and South Arms extend outside the caldera. Lava did not reach Nebraska - lava extended only to West Yellowstone. Tephra (at that distance considered "volcanic ash") can be found as far away as the Gulf of Mexico and does appear as a recognizable layer in Nebraska. The closest Yellowstone volcanic deposits to Bozeman are welded tuffs (tephra that was still semi-molten when it landed) south ofCameron in the Madison Valley and at as close as Big Sky in the Gallatin valley - Bozeman MIGHT survive a catastrophic Yellowstone eruption if the winds at the time were strong westerlies!
Bozeman's earthquake hazard is problematic. The Paradise and Madison valleys have recent (less than 10,000 years) fault escarpments indicative of earthquakes comparable to the 1959 Hebgen 'quake. But the Gallatin, Townsend, and Helena valleys lack such fault scarps. It is POSSIBLE that our characteristic earthquake is closer to M6.5, only about 5% as strong as the Hebgen 'quake, but still potentially damaging.
The rounded river rocks in Belgrade, like those in the I90 gravel pits, were in all likelihood deposited 10,000 years ago by gravel-choked glacial outwash stream, thus they are not indicative of flood hazard at present.
I agree entirely with the weather descriptions. You haven't lived until you have tried to merge onto South 19th at -40oF and you clutch doesn't engage fully because the lubricant has frozen!