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The barriers "really have protected our community,” Juneau City Manager Katie Koester told a news conference. “If it weren't for them, we would have hundreds and hundreds of flooded homes.”

The Mendenhall Glacier is about 12 miles (19 kilometers) from Juneau, home to 30,000 people in southeast Alaska, and is a due to its proximity and easy access on walking trails. Homes on the city’s outskirts are within miles of Mendenhall Lake, which sits below the glacier, and many front the Mendenhall River, into which the glacial outburst flowed.

Juneau, which is accessible only by boat and plane, is 570 miles (917 kilometers) southeast of Anchorage, Alaska's largest city. The flooding won’t impact between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Basin flooding is a yearly worry

Flooding from the basin has become since 2011 and has gotten worse in recent years. It happens because a smaller glacier near Mendenhall Glacier retreated — a casualty of the — and left a basin that fills with rainwater and snowmelt each spring and summer, dammed by the glacier.

When the water builds up enough pressure, it forces its way under or around the ice dam, enters Mendenhall Lake, and flows down the Mendenhall River.

The city saw successive years of record flooding in and , with flooding extending farther into the Mendenhall Valley.

Last year, were damaged.

A large outburst can release some 15 billion gallons of water, according to the University of Alaska Southeast and Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center. That’s the equivalent of nearly 23,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. During last year’s flood, the flow rate in the rushing Mendenhall River was about half that of Niagara Falls, the researchers say.

Barriers are installed

City officials responded to concerns from property owners this year by working with state, federal and tribal entities to install a temporary levee along roughly 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) of riverbank in an attempt to guard against widespread flooding. The 10,000 are essentially giant, reinforced sandbags intended to protect more than 460 properties, said emergency manager Ryan O’Shaughnessy.

But the measure was not without critics. Two homeowners have sued, complaining that the government was taking their property to erect the barriers without compensating them.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, some water seeped into yards through drains that had been installed under the barriers. In other spots, trees floating down the river struck and damaged the barriers, officials said.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is at the start of what’s expected to be a yearslong process of studying conditions in the region and examining options for a more permanent solution, such as a levee. The timeline has angered some residents, who say it’s unreasonable.

Outburst floods are expected to continue as long as the Mendenhall Glacier acts as an ice dam to seal off the basin, which could span another 25 to 60 years, according to the university and science center researchers.

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Associated Press writer Becky Bohrer in Juneau contributed to this report.