Fremont County Declares A Disaster
By: Megan Boatwright
Like many other counties in northern Idaho, Fremont County declared a disaster today. Snowfalls have been higher than normal, and the county says their resources are being used to the maximum extent possible.
Snow is piling so high on the roofs of people's homes and other public buildings that they could collapse. Not from the weight of snow, but the ice it turns into.
Keith Richey with Emergency Management says he is working closely with Idaho Homeland Security in response to the disaster, and the county is asking people to be aware of the dangers.
BOISE, Idaho -- Officials in north Idaho's Kootenai County have declared a state of emergency, saying a series of snowstorms has crippled the region's ability to deal with roof collapses, impassible roads, snowed-in senior citizens and other crises.
"The problem is it just keeps coming," Kootenai County Commissioner Rick Currie told The Associated Press shortly after making the emergency declaration this week. "You can only stack the snow so high, and we're running out of places to put it. Our signal lights aren't functioning the way they should. Our lights have been flickering all day. There's a depletion of resources, of manpower, for public and private snow removal."
Across the border in Spokane, Wash., that state's governor, Chris Gregoire, declared a state of emergency Thursday for 15 counties, mostly in snowbound eastern Washington.
"This is certainly the most snow we've had since 1996 or 1997, and if you rank the snowfall from the beginning of the snow season to the present day, you're in the top five to 15 snowfalls -- depending on the region -- of all our records going back to the 1890s," Livingston said.
Snow accumulations in north Idaho have ranged from 4 to 7 feet.
Our city has building code requirements that include special attention to making sure the roofs meet minimum standards for pitch and weight bearing capacity. The standards are reasonable considering that annual snowfall here averages 40 inches. Snow is 4 inches of the 17 inches of annual liquid water precipitation that we get here. Not all that different from San Diego. I'm at 4600 ft elevation. Most of the snow here is like granulated sugar. Summers are warm (86 to 104) with very low humidity.