One year ago this month, the Sandy River flooded, destroying homes and causing havoc on the Mountain.

While it may not be possible to prevent these high water events from happening, the Hoodland Fire District and Clackamas County Emergency Management has partnered with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service to install gauges in the Sandy and Salmon Rivers to monitor river levels.

“It’s going to give us a heads up,” said HFD Chief Mic Eby. “I was excited
about it because it’s the first positive response to taking our rivers seriously
for predicting.”

The gauges, consisting of a vertical strip with numbers marking river height,
were installed in the late summer under bridges on the Sandy River at Lolo
Pass, the Sandy River at Brightwood bridge and the Salmon River at the
Brightwood Loop Road bridge. Members of the HFD, along with some
community volunteers, have taken readings off the gauges, but that practice
stopped since the rivers have been below the lowest marking. (Readings
recently resumed with the end-of-December rain tht caused the rivers to
rise.)

Andy Bryant, a Senior Service Hydrologist for NOAA, noted that last year’s
flood helped speed up the process for installing the gauges. He warned that
while they have come up with “conservative” flood stage levels – since the
river channels are dynamic with debris often shifting – actual flood warnings
might not be very specific.

“Other parts of the northwest and the country where rivers respond slower ...
can be very specific,” Bryant said. “This is not an environment where we can
do that.”

Readings are entered into a website for anyone to access, although it can take
up to an hour from the time of the reading before the information is available
online.

Eby, who has been hoping for such a system since the early 1980s, noted the
system will help establish a profile for the river and the ability to identify high
water and flood stages.

“You always hear about rivers at flood stages and when they pass,” Eby said.
“I’d like to have that happen up here.”

Eby added that the information could be used to help identify what point to
evacuate certain areas, start blocking roads, when to activate an emergency
operations center and when the rivers can be expected to crest.

In the past, members of the HFD often used pink flags on a river’s shore to
monitor river height during an event.

The district also took information from area weather stations to try and
understand what was happening on the Mountain.

“That’s the only way we’ve had to gauge,” said Eby of the pink flags. “It’s
worked okay. I know all fire departments are the same way when it comes to
the weather – we watch it.”

Bryant noted that NOAA is working with the county on installing automated
gauges with continuous readings (and not requiring somebody to take one),
but that funding for such equipment is the biggest obstacle.

Automated gauges could arrive some time late next year at the earliest,
according to Bryant.

To view data from the river gauges, please visit
water.weather.gov/ahps2/index.php?wfo=pqr (it is highly recommend
bookmarking the page if you plan on being a frequent visitor).