Borough crews have begun repairing Seward roads inundated by two storm systems that dumped inches of rain over the peninsula last week.
Crews did an assessment of flood damage on Monday and began work on borough-maintained roads outside of Seward City limits early Tuesday, Dan Nelson, emergency manager for the Kenai Peninsula Borough, said.
“We’re moving on to the repair and recovery phase,” Nelson said in a video update Tuesday morning.
“It started yesterday afternoon and will be continuing through the rest of the week,” he said. “We’re working to repair roads and getting them back to a permanent state, getting gravel that was stockpiled moved and just generally getting things back to normal.”
Nelson said residents of Seward and Bear Creek are going to notice more work being done on area roads. He said residents should be cautious of the machinery.
The repair work is mostly being done in the Bruno Road and Forest Lane areas, but crews are also making repairs to Dieckgraeff Road, which is inside the city limits, but is owned in part by the borough because it goes to a solid waste transfer station, Nelson said.
Seward received more than 7 inches of rain from the two tropical systems that moved through the area last week.
The first system, which passed through Seward on Oct. 12 and 13, dropped approximately 2 inches.
The rainfall primed the area for the second system, which rolled in on Oct. 15 and dropped another 5 inches over three days, Rebecca Anderson, meteorologist with the National Weather Service Anchorage Forecast Office, said.
“That was the one that really brought a lot of that flooding to that area,” Anderson said.
Kenai Peninsula Borough Mayor Charlie Pierce declared a state of emergency Oct. 16, after rainfall, storm water and debris caused damage to roads, bridges and public facilities.
A third low-pressure system — this time moving from the Gulf of Alaska — will bring more rain to the peninsula this week.
