Following a La Niña winter, the Clark Fork River crested at nearly 13 feet in Missoula. Floodwaters devastated homes north of Third Street in the Orchard Homes neighborhood. Residents used any means necessary—waders, ATVs, even canoes—to access their property.
Volunteers from the Missoula Rural Fire Department divert a freshly formed channel of the Clark Fork River by digging a trench through Randy Newman’s yard on Tower Street.
With a dam freshly removed, floodwaters at the confluence of the Blackfoot (left) and Clark Fork Rivers fill the Milltown Reservoir floodplain for the first time in a century.
Sections of the Upper Clark Fork River Basin damaged by a century of mining received a boost in funding Dec. 19, when Gov. Brian Schweitzer authorized $116.5 million to repair the most polluted parts of the damaged landscape, like this “slicken.”
Twitter
Facebook
RSS