Anna Canny

The city now estimates that at least 290 Juneau homes, including apartments and condos, were damaged by last week’s glacial outburst flooding.

Carolina Sekona spent the weekend scrambling to set up a new day care in the vacant Floyd Dryden Middle School. (Photo by Anna Canny/KTOO)

Water continues to rose along the Mendenhall River during Juneau’s annual glacial outburst flood on Monday, Aug. 5, 2024. (Clarise Larson/KTOO)

An air-to-air heat pump can provide a more efficient alternative for heating a home, particularly in regions of Alaska with less dramatic temperature swings like Southeast. Because they run off of electricity, they can also reduce greenhouse gas emissions in communities that use renewable alternatives like hydropower or solar. (Erin McKinstry/KCAW)

Southeast Alaska’s king salmon sport fishery is closed, effective Monday through the end of September.

A cruise ship departs Juneau in July, 2023. (Clarise Larson/KTOO)

Rain runoff runs down a drain in the Mendenhall Valley in November 2022. (Clarise Larson/ for the Juneau Empire)

A team of scientists and Alaska Native community members use an autonomous underwater vehicle to explore the continental shelf west of Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska, seeking submerged caves and rock shelters that would have been accessible to early inhabitants of the region. (Photo courtesy of NOAA)

In this newscast: Homeowners in the Mendenhall Valley are cleaning up and making repairs after last month’s record-breaking glacial outburst flood. They say it’s hard to know what kind of flood mitigation will protect them next year. Advocates for the “Ship Free Saturday” ballot initiative hope try to drum up support before the fall election.

Staying completely dry might be difficult, if not impossible, but it’s also hard to make peace with letting the water in again and again. Both options are expensive.