The shed behind the Lessard family home on Brothers Avenue looks like it’s prepared for the apocalypse. It’s fortified with extra studs, siding all the way down, and hurricane ties on the top and bottom — hardware normally used to protect a structure from hurricanes or earthquakes.
The family built it themselves.
“If you picked this up by one point, it would all come up in one piece,” father Michael Lessard said.
The shed is the last bulwark against a problem that’s plagued the the Lessard family — parents Michael and Suzanna Lessard and Suzanna’s four teenage and adult children — since they purchased their Mendenhall Valley home in 2005. Impaired drivers have hit their home or driven onto their property three times since they’ve owned it. The Department of Transportation and Public Facilities has logged a total of 17 crashes at the intersection.
Michael and Suzanna are at their wit’s end trying to prevent their home from being hit. The most recent crash was the worst: drunk driver Lance Cesar plowed into their daughter Shelby Girmscheid’s bedroom last May. Girmscheid, who was preparing for prom at the time, was buried under a full-length mirror. By a stroke of luck, she suffered only minor injuries to her ankle.
“He almost took a life. It was close. If the shed hadn’t been there, the engineers say it would have been worse,” Michael said.
“He would have gone through at least two bedrooms,” Suzanna added.
[Drunk driver crashes bedroom during prom prep]
The Lessard family home lies in a precarious spot: at the top of the ‘T’ formed by the intersection of Mendenhall Loop Road and Glacier Spur Road. Brothers Avenue runs parallel to Mendenhall Loop Road, which bends at a 90-degree angle at the Lessards’ home. Glacier Spur Road carries on north to the Mendenhall Glacier. A bike path, some boulders and trees are all that lie between the highway and the home.
The series of crashes started in 2007. A woman suffering from a medical disability became unconscious at the wheel and plowed into one of a series of glacier-carved boulders behind their home. Her car, coming from the bottom of the ‘T’ up, hit the grizzly-bear-size rock with enough force to tip it up. It occurred then to Michael: “This might be a little bit bigger deal than we thought.”
Then, in 2009, a young drunk driver crashed between two of the boulders and into a line of trees. Again, he came from the bottom of the ‘T.’
In May 2017, Cesar got behind the wheel of his Dodge Caravan with 0.227 percent blood alcohol content, police say. Approaching the intersection from the bottom of the ‘T,’ Cesar swerved off the road, knocked over a highway sign, struck a boulder and plowed through the since-rebuilt 12-foot shed before pushing into Girmscheid’s bedroom. The crash caused about $40,000 in damage. The old shed folded in “like an accordion,” Michael said, Cesar’s van the only thing preventing it from collapsing.
Since 2009, Michael and Suzanna have been looking for solutions. Their first idea was to ask the city or state to put up a guardrail. So they contacted the Department of Transportation and Public Facilities.
An engineering fix wouldn’t be easy, the Lessards found out. A DOT/PF engineer told the Lessards in a series of emails that their home lies outside the “clear zone” next to Mendenhall Loop Road. It’s the swath of land next to a roadway motorists use to regain control should they veer off road. Traffic volume and road speed determine a clear zone’s size. Guardrails are used to protect hazards in the clear zone like an old shed or a cliff. DOT/PF visited the intersection, determined that Michael and Suzanna’s home was not a hazard in the clear zone, and turned down the request for a guardrail.
There was some talk of a roundabout at that location, DOT/PF told the Lessards in 2009, but there was nothing else the state could do.
Michael disputes the idea that their home is outside the clear zone. If so many cars are running into his home, he reasons, doesn’t that tell engineers that there isn’t enough room for cars to recover?
When reached recently for an explanation about the guardrail, the Empire got a slightly different explanation. DOT/PF guidelines prevent the use of guardrails in this situation, spokesperson Aurah Landau said, as guardrails are used to prevent sidelong impacts of 25 degrees or less, not head on, 90-degree crashes.
The three vehicles that have hit the Lessards’ property have launched into the air, Landau added, and a 31-inch guardrail wouldn’t be much help in those situations.
Devices like flashing lights have been shown to help typical drivers and could increase safety at the intersection. But studies show they don’t help impaired drivers, so those wouldn’t have helped the impaired drivers who keep hitting the Lessards’ home, Landau said.
“There is data that shows attention-getting measures work with regular drivers, but we’re not dealing with regular drivers in this situation,” Landau said.
In the end, the department concluded that there’s nothing they could do. The Lessards are allowed to build further protections on their property, Landau said, but traffic experts have determined they don’t have a fix for them. The best solution is just to get people not to drink and drive.
“It’s hard to apply an engineering fix that would solve an education or enforcement issue,” Landau said.
The Lessards also reached out to the city for help. Recently, they say they were granted permission to build a fence on their property. Michael is also considering installing 3/4-inch cabling to further protect their home. But even that might not work if a driver is going fast enough. They feel they’ve done all they can to protect their home.
“The state can explain why they won’t put a guardrail in at this location any way they want, but it does not change the fact that they have a duty to protect people from a known hazard. This is a known hazard. The road curves and the end is not visible if you are exceeding the speed limit, unfamiliar with the road, or not paying attention. At the end of the slight curve, is my house where my children sleep. That is the best way I can describe this problem,” Michael said.
• Contact reporter Kevin Gullufsen at 523-2228 and kgullufsen@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @KevinGullufsen.
