Jim Rosenbruch

Written by Jim Rosenbruch.

I was born and raised here, so I have the advantage witnessing this area for 64 years and it's changed a lot, but never have I seen anything like this.

Our place is the first one downstream, the first impacted developed property below Gunlock. We're located just below the Indian Reservation. Our property is just before you break in below the Petroglyph Canyon. We have about 5 acres and just about a mile of creek bank runs through our property. We have operated a business in Alaska for 41 years and have maintained a house here as well. We constantly deal with horrendous weather. We get huge rain and wind storms that would be catastrophic, but we have the equipment designed to deal with it. The most disconcerting thing here was to sit with your hands in your pockets looking out the window and not able to do anything as the water raised. We designed our house with this sort of thing in mind and the water only got to within 8 feet of the house. The fields and the irrigation system, 25 years worth of work, dissipated in an afternoon. The hardest thing of all was the feeling of not being able to do anything as it happened.

After it all was said and done, we had 162 sprinklers in our fields and we were left with 162 debris piles that ranged from one to eight feet high. Every single sprinkler was long gone. On Saturday, there were 50 members of the LDS Church here with chainsaws. On Monday, again 50 showed up and we were in an absolute state of mental paralysis. Those selfless individuals came out here and they were not that nice looking after spending two full days working to move that material out. I was so impressed and grateful for the people who came out who didn't know us and put in that kind of energy to assist us.
 

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