Flood waters force out residents

By AMANDA RICKER Chronicle Staff Writer

Nancy Brady cried as she loaded mattresses and other bedroom furniture out of her Springhill Park home and into trucks on Sunday.

Photo provided by Scott Gillilan Flood waters surrounded homes in the Stonegate subdivision, Sunday afternoon. She hadn’t stacked sandbags soon enough to keep an inch of standing water from pooling into her daughter’s old bedroom. She was lucky that was the worst of it. The water came within inches of flowing through her front door.

“I’ve been here 12 years and I’ve never seen anything like it,” Brady said Monday. “All I could do was cry and keep throwing stuff in the trucks and hope I could get it out.”

Brady was one of at least two dozen homes north of Bozeman that were turned into islands over the Memorial Day weekend, surrounded by flooding from the nearby East Gallatin River. In Bozeman, water from tributaries of the Gallatin, such as the Bozeman and Bridger creeks, also flooded homes’ basements and closed roads.

No major injuries were reported, but some residents’ drinking water was contaminated.

A boil water order has been issued for Springhill Park’s roughly 35 residences. It’s expected to be in effect until Wednesday and residents will be notified when the order is lifted, said Eric Campbell, water operator for the area. Residents there should boil their water for at least one minute before drinking it. A well was submerged during the flood and may be contaminated with fecal coliform bacteria from sewage and animal waste.

Neighbors in Springhill Park used hunting boats on Sunday to transport people to and from their homes. The water over the neighborhood’s Cape Avenue, where Brady lives, was waist-deep.

Nearby, on Story Mill Road, a man asked deputies on Sunday to help evacuate his pregnant wife from their house. He feared that if she stepped in the ice-cold water, she could lose the baby, according to a Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office records.

It’s not the first time the area has flooded, neighbors said, but it’s worse than it’s been before.

Scott Gillilan, a hydrologist and consultant to Gallatin County on floodplain issues, said he called county disaster services at 9 p.m. on Saturday, but many were busy sandbagging roads.

At 3 a.m., Gillilan was finally able to lead deputies to some of the flooding in north Bozeman. But there were only three deputies on duty. The county’s emergency services manager was pulled from bed at 5 a.m. to help.

“There’s not one person to point a finger at, but the total response was pretty disappointing,” Gillilan said Monday. “By 7:30 p.m. Saturday, I knew it was going to happen and there weren’t any forces to mobilize.

“For people walking out to get their newspapers on Sunday morning it was like ‘Oh my God,’” he said. “The county tried to do what they could, but we need to be better at it.”

From a Department of Natural Resources helicopter, Gillilan documented the flooding Sunday in Springhill Park as well as the Stonegate subdivision near the Riverside Country Club, Old Farm neighborhood and around the Nelson Road areas north of Bozeman.

It’s not the first time these areas have flooded, but it’s the worst that it’s been in years. And many of the areas are where developers had fought county officials in order to build.

“This flood just proved where these (flood) areas are,” Gillilan said. “That was not a big flood. That was not a 100-year-flood. I don’t think it was a 20-year-flood. If they thought that was a big flood, they haven’t seen anything yet.”

The Gallatin River at Logan, the closest area monitored by the National Weather Service, is forecast to rise just above flood stage again on Thursday. As of Monday, it was at 7.5 feet. Flood stage is 8 feet.

“The chances of having a larger flood are better now than they were before this flood because everything’s so saturated now,” Gillilan said.

And some areas have their own unique problems.

Mike Balyeat, a neighbor of Brady’s on Cape Avenue, said part of the reason Springhill Park continues to flood is a diversion ditch was filled in by the people who owned his house before him.

Like many of his neighbors, Balyeat and his wife, Midi, spent Monday pumping more than a foot of water from the foundation of the house. Yet, much of the water Balyeat’s neighbors pumped from their basements wound up running onto his property.

“It just kind of all escalates and affects the other,” Midi Balyeat said.

Amanda Ricker can be reached at aricker@dailychronicle.com or 582-2628.

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