By Alex deMarban
Anchorage Daily News
With smoke still curling from the scorched remnants of a raging fire in the Southwest Alaska village of Hooper Bay, residents and volunteers kicked off a massive relief effort Friday morning to replace the school and homes that were destroyed and to get food, water and shelter to more than 20 homeless families.
Short-term needs were partially met Friday in the devastated village as planeloads of relief supplies arrived from social agencies and nearby communities, but safe drinking water is a big concern, village leaders said.
Thursday’s blaze torched 14 acres in the heart of the village, destroying a grocery store, 14 homes, teacher housing and the school, leaving behind heat-twisted sheets of metal and blackened pilings. It raged through most of the day and sent up a column of acrid smoke that residents likened to a black tornado.
Toxic ashes from the smoke and material from exploding gas drums probably contaminated rooftop rain barrels and nearby tundra ponds, where people collect drinking water, said Myron Naneng, president of the Association of Village Council Presidents, a regional nonprofit serving villages in Western Alaska.
Hooper Bay, a Yup’ik Eskimo village of 1,133, doesn’t have piped water or sewer systems.
“There’s wells on both sides of the community, but I think we’ll need bottled water to alleviate the contamination by smoke,” said Naneng, who is originally from Hooper Bay and was in the nearby village of Chevak at the time of the fire.
After the fire erupted early Thursday morning — state fire officials say it started in the school, but they still don’t know why — city police ordered area residents to hustle across town or to the dock in case a nearby tank farm exploded, residents said.
More than 70 people lost everything but the clothes on their backs, residents said.
Alaska State Troopers are investigating the cause of the fire with state fire marshals, said trooper spokesman Greg Wilkinson, reached by phone in Anchorage.
Is arson suspected?
“I’m not going to say,” he said. “What I will say is we’ll investigate all possible causes.”
The fire goes in the books as one of the worst in the state’s history because it wiped out so many buildings in such a small community, said state fire marshal Gary Powell, also reached in Anchorage. The investigation could be completed by the end of next week, he said Friday.
Meanwhile, in Hooper Bay, electricity was restored to the entire village Friday morning but phones were still out in about a third of the town, officials said.
Agencies such as the Coastal Villages Region Fund, representing coastal fishing villages in Western Alaska, brought in chartered planes filled with relief supplies such as cereal, diapers and baby food.
As word spread over VHF radio that aid had arrived on Friday, people on four-wheelers dashed down dusty roads to the organization’s halibut-processing facility, where the food was distributed, whisking away 1,500 pounds of supplies in about 15 minutes, officials with the group said.
In one weather-grayed building, bent-over volunteers divided shirts, shoes and jackets into long mounds to be distributed to victims. Next door in the tribal government building, women served hot fish soup and ham-and-cheese sandwiches to displaced residents. The Alaska Commercial store, the only remaining grocery store in town, as well as the village corporation also donated food supplies.
In another building, village leaders huddled around a telephone in a conference call with state officials and social agencies to draft a response plan. They created a Wells Fargo Disaster Relief Fund to accept monetary donations, offers of which are pouring in from around the country, village leaders said.
Among the more pressing questions the group considered: With the structure that contained the high school, junior high school and elementary school destroyed, where will the village’s 400 or so students attend school?
The state and school district are working up plans to get kids in school as soon as possible, but it won’t be before Aug. 24, when they were scheduled to start, said Karen Goodwin with the Lower Yukon School District, based in Mountain Village, 87 miles northeast of Hooper Bay.
Ideas include giving parents the option of sending children to schools in nearby villages, she said, and giving priority to seniors so they can attend Mt. Edgecumbe boarding school in Southeast Alaska.
The district also plans to speed construction of new school and teacher housing that was already under way and scheduled to be completed in the village in December, she said. The district is seeking funds and support to increase construction manpower, she said.
“If we can build schools in Iraq, we certainly need to do that here,” she said.
Eight teacher-housing units in trailers, a duplex and a triplex were destroyed, she said. The district has moved some teachers and their families to temporary shelters in Mountain Village, she said. Others have stayed behind to live with family members in Hooper Bay, she said.
In the village, officials with the American Red Cross of Alaska arrived Friday to set up a family assistance center and provide clothing, shoes, bedding and other supplies.
The Red Cross is also searching for temporary housing in nearby villages, spokeswoman Kelly Hurd said.
For now, small homes that were already packed tight with several generations have doubled in population, Naneng said. One house alone — with four bedrooms and a single bathroom — is crammed with 23 people.
AVCP’s regional housing authority is looking for funds to rebuild homes as quickly as possible, he said. Residents who lost everything are also hurrying to tabulate lost items in hopes they’ll be reimbursed if the state declares a disaster, he said.
The city has requested a disaster declaration, but Gov. Frank Murkowski’s office hadn’t announced one as of Friday evening. The governor’s office said Friday that he planned to fly to Hooper Bay on Sunday.