Lincoln County officials during a public meeting Saturday afternoon in Libby addressed the response to Thursday's devasting floods and attempted to ease fears about the integrity of an earthen dam above the city.

The Dome Theater was packed with area residents wanting to know the condition of the old Libby Reservoir as well as the Upper Flower Creek Reservoir, which feeds the river through town.

Officials hoped people would stay out of affected areas and use care while traveling in more remote areas where the exact extent of the damage was unknown. They said people who had questions should call the county Emergency Operations Center at 406-293-6295 or go to the Lincoln County Health Department's Facebook page for up-to-date information.

Sheriff Darren Short said a Type 3 Incident Team from the western region would be coming to help manage the incident. He wasn’t sure who the commander would be, but said it would include individuals from western Montana who had experience in flood management.

“They are better equipped to handle an incident of this magnitude,” Short said. “Up until now, local county employees were working on this.”

Prior to Saturday’s meeting, Lincoln County Emergency Operations said in a press release that a low spot on the earthen embankment was breeched for roughly 12 hours on Thursday, Dec. 11, which resulted in moderate damage to the dike.

"At this time, the Lower Flower Creek Diversion Dam does not appear to be at risk of imminent failure," the agency stated in a press release Saturday morning. "The site will continue to be closely monitored.”

If conditions change, the release stated, response teams are prepared to intervene with heavy equipment.

There are no concerns with the larger Flower Creek Dam upstream, which was built in 2015, the agency stated.

“There are no signs of damage, it is intact and is in great shape,” Short said.

The older reservoir, which is located 1 1/2 miles from Libby, is heavily silted and county Sheriff Darren Short said that would slow the flow if the dike failed.

Boyd White, the county emergency management director, said he has no plans to evacuate his home on Flower Creek Road.

“I slept in my home last night with my wife and I plan to sleep there tonight,” White said. “We sent out the notification late last night because that’s when we received the information from Montana Department of Emergency Services. We had concerns and felt it was best to deliver the information as soon as we could.”

White added that dam failures typically are in sections, not the entire structure at one time. If it does fail, there’d probably be damage, but not necessarily entire homes, White said.

“If we thought people needed to be evacuated, we would have sent the notification,” White said.

While officials said the National Weather Service forecast for next Monday through Wednesday, which reported the possibility of one to two inches for the valleys of Lincoln, Mineral and Sanders counties in western Montana and two to three inches in the mountains of northwest Montana and north-central Idaho, a high-end scenario could bring totals one to two inches higher than the estimates.

“While the creeks are receding, they are expected to rise, but not to the extent we saw last week,” White said. “The Cabinet Mountains saw as much as 13 inches of rain last week and five inches in the valley.

“But we can’t truly say what will happen because they didn’t predict we’d get that much rain. I don’t think we’ll see as much of a change, but that’s just a guess,” White said. “They do their best, but predicting the weather is tough. 

The Red Cross emergency shelter was moved from the Assembly of God Church in Libby to the Memorial Center. It was done because of concerns that if the dike on the lower reservoir failed, flood waters could reach that side of town.

Volunteers from David Thompson Search and Rescue were handing out bottled water Saturday afternoon at the Memorial Center.

Others questioned how long the boil water order will remain in effect.

Zach Sherbo, county Public Health Manager, said he thought it would remain in effect for at least through next week.

Questions about the city’s sewer system were not answered until a woman in the back of the theater said she works there and that it was fine.

The concern for the city’s water supply deals with potential bacterial contamination in the drinking water system. Residents were advised to boil water for at least three minutes before using it for drinking, cooking, brushing teeth or washing dishes.

Local school officials said classes would resume Monday, but asked parents to send their students to school with a full bottle of drinking water each day. Kootenai Valley Christian officials said they will have water brought in for refills or for those that do not have access to clean drinking water.

In Libby, bus routes 1 and 5 will be altered. Libby Public Schools Superintendent Ron Goodman said parents would be notified through ParentSquare.

Officials also said they are monitoring likely sites for potential land slides and that getting bridges replaced and roads fixed could take several months, possibly as long as 18 months for some bridges, depending on ownership and damages.