County emergency staff warn sandbag supplies limited as spring runoff planning ramps up

County emergency staff briefed the Council of Governments on spring runoff risks and preparedness steps as snowmelt approaches.

Catherine McMillan, the county emergency manager, said basin saturation varies across the county and that April will be a critical month: some sub-basins are near 65% saturated while others remain lower, which affects runoff risk and response priorities. She said clearing critical nodes and culverts is a top mitigation objective and that County Engineer Mike Kendall has mapped culverts and critical nodes and offered those services to cities.

McMillan reported on sandbag inventories and staging: recent counts dropped from roughly 28,000 to about 25,000 countywide, with approximately 800 prefilled bags available for immediate deployment. “The recent update that John just sent to me is actually 25,000,” McMillan said, describing ongoing distribution to residents and city staging points.

Staff discussed procurement and capability gaps: many local public-works shops lack mechanized sandbagging trucks (the speakers estimated sandbagging trucks cost roughly $50,000) and counties that need large volumes may need to request state assistance or rental contracts. McMillan said prefilled sandbags have a limited shelf life once exposed and that filled, water‑touched bags become a hazmat disposal issue, meaning communities must plan for post-event collection and disposal.

Communications lead Bridget Conway said the county built a web hub at summitcounty.org/flooding with alert signups, sandbag locations and contacts, translated flyers and social media outreach. Staff also flagged damage-assessment software (Orion was discussed as an example) and proposed incident action plans and tabletop exercises to test local EOC coordination and documentation processes.

No formal policy was adopted. Staff requested local officials review storage and staging capacity and sign up for training and tabletop exercises. The county plans to continue weekly situation reports and will follow up with more detailed sandbag-storage and procurement information.