City engineer Jon Erichson had 20 messages Thursday afternoon; when he checked again first thing Friday morning there were 20 more.

Saturday, July 15, 2000

City engineer Jon Erichson had 20 messages Thursday afternoon; when he checked again first thing Friday morning there were 20 more. The days since the flood have been hectic ones and not just for Erichson.

Even though all of Austin’s city departments have "been there, done that" with both flood recovery and disaster aid, it doesn’t make the job any easier, tidier or less time consuming.

"Things are going well, but it’s a fairly labor intensive process," Erichson said. "We’re cleaning a lot of mud and silt off of public properties. A lot of reconstruction will have to occur with storm and sanitary sewers – the volume of water was such that it blew some of the pipes out. We also need to look into the erosion of stream banks where the water discharged and ditch lines that were impacted by the flood."

Other than clean up and sewer repair, Erichson didn’t think the city itself had suffered much structural damage from the process.

"We were close at the arena, and very close at the wastewater treatment plant – that was critical. We mobilized city staff and contractors that we’d hired to work on other projects at about 10 a.m. that day. We probably increased the dike height by three feet in some places. The contractors were great – very responsive to the needs of the community."

Although Erichson will be the point man throughout the disaster assistance process, with Director of Administrative Services Tom Dankert acting as second in command, each department is going through the steps necessary to make life normal again.

The city street department is almost there. Street cleanup and washing in the aftermath of the flooding is mostly complete. Now staff are busy with flood debris and sandbag pickup: both should be put on the curb or boulevard if residents want the city to take it away.

"We’re doing pretty well," street department boss Steve Moe said. "We’re to the point of getting back to some of our regular maintenance duties. We’re still doing some pumping in the southeast section of town, plus the ditches still need work, but they’re still too wet," he added.

Park and Rec director Denny Maschka said a person could "follow the river to see where we’re cleaning."

The grass is gray and the park roads muddy starting at East Side Lake and on down through Sutton, Driesner, Lions, Lafayette and Marcusen parks. Much of the bigger flood debris has been removed; Maschka said they will wait for rain to restore the grass to its usual green.

"I’ve never seen the water so high at Marcusen," the director said. "It was eight rows up in the bleachers and it reached the scoreboard – that’s the first time that’s happened."

The big problem at the baseball stadium, according to Maschka, is the outfield, which remains wet longer than the infield so it will be longer before staff can clean up there. In the meantime events have been rescheduled to other fields.

Clean up will go on.

The process of applying for and getting state and federal funds will go on even longer. City staff will meet with a Federal Emergency Management Agency representative next week, and then the process of filling out paperwork will begin in earnest.

FEMA will cover 75 percent of the city’s eligible costs, the state 15 percent and the city itself has to cover the final 10 percent.

"We don’t have any idea of the numbers at this point in time," Dankert said. "Once we have that kick off meeting, however, things happen pretty quickly … at least from the FEMA side."

Dankert, who handles the city’s finances, added that the city is still waiting on some funding for the last disaster in Austin, the massive windstorm of June 27, 1998. FEMA has sent the bulk of the federal money already, but the city has yet to get a penny from the state.

Part of that is the legislative process, part the sheer volume of disaster aid that the state is handling and part is the fact that Austin didn’t finish up some of the work until last fall.

"They’re reviewing billions of dollars in storm damages," Dankert said. "They’ll get to us eventually."