KUAC - Fairbanks

A sewage leak and a fire-alarm malfunction closed the Fairbanks North Star Borough’s administration building Wednesday. That included the treasury desk, where many borough residents come to pay their property taxes — which are due on Friday.

There were two distinct and very obvious problems at once.

“It, it was, it was, uh, one of the weirdest days I’ve been at the borough in the time I’ve been there. I’ll tell you that right now,” Chief of Staff Jim Williams said.

Williams said that on Wednesday morning, the recently serviced fire alarms went off, so all the employees went through their fire-drill protocols. Again and again.

“Our procedure is to have people go out and do the evacuation team until we figure out what’s going on, and we had him go off about a half a dozen times that even during the event when I was trying to get people out of the building, the fire alarms went off.”

Williams said staff members determined an incorrect part was installed in the alarm system, so between trips to the parking lot on Terminal Street, they called to have it fixed.

“I the meantime, alarms are going off all the time and we had City Fire showing up. And you know, you wanna make sure that it’s not really a fire. So every time we went through each of the protocols to respond to those alarms, which was kind of exhausting the staff also,” Williams said.

Then, something else happened.

“What appears to have happened is, we had a sewage backup up on the second floor that overflowed from the second floor restrooms and kind of the center of the building, and began spilling down into the clerk’s office and into the first floor area,” Williams said. “Raw sewage.”

The clerk’s office immediately became unusable. Then the smell began to permeate the entire building.

“ It was so putrid in the building. It’s like, I can’t, I can’t have employees working in this. This isn’t gonna work,” Williams said. “And I was out front for a while until about 2:00, 2:30, kind of redirecting taxpayers as they came up, and a lot of ’em turned their nose up. It’s like, ‘what is that smell?’ they could smell outside the building. It was, it was awful.”

Those taxpayers? They are trying to come in to pay the first half of their annual property taxes in person at the treasury desk. Even though there is a credit card option, or taxpayers can mail a check, many chose to bring their money in person. But the building was shut down.

“ This is significant for the tax deadline because the tax deadline is Friday the first. You gotta pay your first tax taxes by Friday the first, or else you’re late,” Lojewski said.

Borough Assembly Presiding Officer Aaron Lojewski said he was asked by the administration to call an emergency meeting of the borough assembly to change the tax deadline.

“ An emergency special meeting, which can be done on as little as 24 hour notice. So we’re gonna go ahead and meet in the school board chambers, just in case there’s a problem with our chambers. We’ll have a, a safe place to meet,” he said.

Lojewski said the resolution would change the tax deadline from Sept. 1 to Sept. 5.

“So that would mean that the taxes, if this proposal is passed, would be due on, uh, Tuesday, the first business day after the holiday weekend,” he said.

The resolution would only change the deadline for the first tax payment. The second half of owed taxes are still due on November first.

Williams said that is not affected by the disastrous maintenance problems at the borough building Wednesday.

“ I don’t even know how to explain it, how weird it was,” he said. “I just know that it was an awful day trying to get people to get work done and get taxpayers their service and get everybody to the building. So it was not easy. It was, it was painful.”

The staff was back in the building Thursday morning, relying on the ventilation to clear out the smell.

This story has been updated.

The decommissioning of an old nuclear power plant at Fort Greely can move forward now that the federal agency overseeing the project has resolved a contract dispute that delayed work for more than a year.

Work on the final phase of decommissioning and dismantling the long-mothballed SM-1A heat and power plant has been on hold since late last year, when a company that was competing for the contract began filing protests over how the Army Corps of Engineers handled the bid proposals.

The Corps awarded a $103 million contract to South Carolina-based Westinghouse Government Services last August. But soon thereafter officials for a competing firm, Louisiana-based Aptim-Amentum Alaska Decommissioning appealed the decision to the federal General Accounting Office. The GAO partially upheld the protest and directed the Corps of Engineers to reopen discussions with the competing companies and re-evaluate their bid proposals.

“We ultimately made the decision to reverse the award, based on our re-evaluation of proposals,” says Brenda Barber, the Corps’ project manager. “So the award is going to Aptim-Amentum Alaska Decommissioning, and the Westinghouse Government Services contract has been terminated.”

Barber said Wednesday that when the Corps allowed the companies competing for the contract to submit final proposals, Aptim-Amentum Alaska Decommissioning — also known as A3D — lowered its bid for the contract to $95.3 million.

“And it was deemed to be fair (and) reasonable, and resulted in an award to them,” she said.

That’s about all Barber could say about the dispute. She referred most questions to the GAO.

“We don’t typically comment too much on the protests,” she said, “just because of the sensitivity.”

According to online information about the dispute on a GAO webpage, A3D accused the Corps of misevaluating the competing Westinghouse proposal. A3D also accused the Corps of failing to take into account the lack of a so-called key personnel-retention plan in the Westinghouse proposal.

Barber said the year-long, back-and-forth process of reviewing and re-evaluating the proposals means the completion date of the project also will be pushed back by a year.

“So we’re looking at 2029, at this point,” she said, adding that it’ll take a while for A3D to begin work on the facility. “We’re finalizing some startup-related issues with respect to the contract now,” she said, “and we’re hopeful that work on the site — physical work on the site — is probably still six to eight months out.”

During that time, Barber says the Corps’s team assigned to the project will be spending time at Fort Greely and the 61-year-old facility on the post to develop detailed engineering and project-timeframe plans.

The SM-1A’s highly enriched uranium dioxide fuel and most highly radioactive components of the facility were removed after it was shut down in 1972. Remaining materials have been entombed in concrete or safely stored onsite. Much of that will be removed as part of the contract with A3D.

The facility generated up to 2 megawatts of electricity and up to 20.2 megawatts of thermal energy for a central steam-heat system.

Barber says when the the remaining work is completed, the SM-1A, like two other prototype military nuclear power plants developed during the Cold War, will finally all be decommissioned and dismantled.

Jonas Bare and longtime friend and travel partner Cynthia Hovsepian set out for a day hike from Chena Hot Springs Resort, east of Fairbanks, on Aug. 10.

“By simple bad choices, a three-hour hike that lead to an eight-day survival,” Bare said.  

He said they followed a loop trail that took them into a burn area, where they lost the path and got disoriented.

“You can’t tell between the burn marks and the actual trail,” Bare said.

They ended up hiking through jumbles of fallen trees and marshy tussocks that Bare compared to giant pillows. 

“As soon as you step in, you have to take all your energy just to pull your foot back out and step up again,” he said. It’s exhausting.”.  

They ate the few snacks they carried by Aug 12, and they were cautious about eating wild berries. But the main issue was thirst.

“Food was never an issue. We never thought about it. We never dealt with it. We never felt the hunger,” Bare said. “We just wanted to keep moving, but water was so — we just seemed like we could not drink enough water. We were so thirsty all the time.” 

Bare said they mostly stayed along a creek for access to water, but they made forays away from it to look for a way out. He said they built fires to warm up and get dry after the frequent rains.

“We made camp over those eight days, four different places,” he said. “We ran across a couple bears — nothing that was really scary for us, but we were very vigilant about our surroundings all through the night. You can’t sleep. You have to keep the fire going. You just take little breaks here and there and you just keep pushing.”    

Bare regrets not bringing their cell phones or some other communication or signaling device. He calculates that they were no more than about 6 miles from the resort at any time, and they saw search aircraft. 

“They were just miles away in another range, and there was no way we could ever get to them. We made a smog fire to try to smoke them out, nothing would seem to work,” he said.        

By the night of Aug. 17, Bare says they were weak and becoming hypothermic.

“We knew that if we didn’t get out of there on their own accord, we were dead,” he said.

He says Hovsepian, who is visually impaired, was faring worse.

“She’s physically done. She can’t see. She can’t climb. So I made her a huge safe area with firewood backup, and I said I’ll be back in five hours,” he said.  

That was Aug. 18. Bare says he hiked north.

“We had a general idea it has to be this way because we eliminated all other options at this point,” he said.

Bare says he eventually found a trail, ran into two people walking, and made it back to the Hot Springs.

“There was all these people here. My dad was there from Ohio,” he said. “He didn’t even recognize me, and that’s probably the picture a lot of people have seen in the media.”

Bare says he guided searchers, who used a helicopter and ATV to find and bring Hovsepian back to the Chena Hot Springs. He thanks everyone who participated in the week-long search effort.

“There were so many people, and you’ve got to understand we were dazed and confused Friday night. I could not interact with everyone enough to get everybody’s names and all that, and faces, but these people have to be recognized,” he said. 

Bare and Hovsepian spent the weekend recovering before flying home to Tennessee. He says Alaska is the fiftieth state they’ve visited together. Getting lost kept them from seeing some other parts of the state, so he says they plan to come back.

More than 1,000 firefighters are suppressing wildfires across Interior Alaska, and about a third of them are working out of a temporary incident command post set up at the Deltana Fairgrounds in Delta Junction.

“We just wanted to let you know that we have over 300 firefighters now in your area,” Alaska Interagency Incident Management Team spokesperson Kale Casey told the Delta City Council Tuesday. “About 200 in the last three or four days have arrived.”

Casey told the Council Tuesday that the firefighters are working on several wildfires burning around the area.

Incident Commander Casey Boespflug said in a community meeting later Tuesday that the main focus is the 47,000-acre Pogo Mine Road Fire, which firefighters refer to as Fire 191.

“The majority of our resources are up on 191,” he said.

The fire has burned up to the trans-Alaska pipeline corridor and in one area slopped-over the right-of-way onto the other side, just east of the Richardson Highway about 30 miles north of Delta Junction. Boespflug says crews have cut a dozer line there to halt the fire’s progress. Aircraft are dropping loads of water and crews are more cutting line to protect cabins in the area.

“We’re just keeping it in check right now with some aviation,” he said. “The plan is to put some crews in there and just go down that pipeline.”

The firefighters got some help Wednesday in the form of afternoon scattered rain showers that tamped down fire activity around the Interior. A line of strong thunderstorms also passed through the Tanana Valley, bringing more rain and some lightning.

Agency officials say overall fire activity has slowed, including the 14,000-acre McCoy Creek Fire, burning along the Salcha River southeast of Fairbanks. And an evacuation orders remains in place on the lower stretch of the river.

A GO order requiring residents to evacuate is also is still in effect for the 10,000-acre Teklanika River Fire south of Nenana that’s part of the 59,000-acre Anderson Complex.

But the Fairbanks North Star Borough on Wednesday downgraded its previous evacuation order to standby for other nearby areas adjacent to the 9,500-acre Lost Horse Creek Fire, including the Haystack Subdivision and the Poker Flat Watershed. An Oregon firefighter reported missing Thursday morning from a camp for Lost Horse Creek crews, 51-year-old Saudith Rendon, was found Thursday evening and taken to a hospital in stable condition.

Alaska’s two largest active wildfires are burning in the Delta Junction area.

As of Monday, the Pogo Mine Road Fire covered 25,000 acres around the Trans Alaska Pipeline and the underground gold mine’s access road. Meanwhile the Delta Fire had burned over 20,000 acres on state and military lands south of the Richardson Highway.

The Pogo Mine Road Fire fire grew significantly over the weekend. In an online update on Monday night, Delta-area state fire management officer Michael Goyette said firefighters are working to protect structures.

“The fire’s been backing up through the structures to the pipeline,” he said.

Goyette said the fire has primarily been advancing to the north-northeast.

“Up through the mountains, away from the highway, the pipeline, the power line, and some other residence(s).  We are currently prepping for the homes and preparing them if needed along the Pogo Road at the entranceway,” he said.

Structure protection work is also happening on the the Delta Fire. And Goyette said that a smaller wildfire in the area, the Mt. Hayes Fire, was burning south of the Alaska Highway and had crossed the Gerstle River, prompting air attack late Monday.

“A bunch of aircraft trying to hold that in between some of the slough ways and the Gerstle River,” he said.

Goyette also addressed the heavy wildfire smoke impacting the region, noting that while smoke causes health and safety issues, it’s beneficial to firefighting.

“When we have all this smoke that’s setting down with the inversion, that keeps the fire behavior down. That allows the firefighters and equipment to get in there, and try to get more fire line put in, get structures prepped,” he said.

Cooler temperatures and showers remain in the forecast, but there were nearly 2,500 lightning strikes in Alaska and the Yukon Territory on Monday alone. Many of those strikes were clustered in the Ray Mountains, west of the Dalton Highway and south of the Koyukuk River.

The rapid advance of the Lost Horse Creek Fire has prompted an evacuation notice for a neighborhood north of Fairbanks.

In an online update posted early Friday, the Alaska Division of Forestry & Fire Protection said the blaze was currently at 1,900 acres, with ground crews in place to engage it. A total of 40 personnel are fighting the fire.

Fairbanks North Star Borough spokesperson Lanien Livingston says the Level 3 “GO” evacuation notice, issued late Wednesday night, covers a portion of the Haystack subdivision, off the Elliot Highway.

“For the upper Haystack Drive area, residents were instructed to go, evacuate, leave that area immediately,” Livingston said. “It’s my understanding that fortunately there are not a lot of residences in that area.”

Livingston says larger areas to the south and the north were put into Level 2, or “SET” status.

“The lower part of Haystack Drive area and the more northeastern part, which is the Poker Flat area, those folks in those areas need to be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice,” she said.

The evacuation notices were issued Wednesday evening due to an increase in activity on the Lost Horse Creek Fire, east of the Elliot Highway near Mile 18, about three and a half miles north of Haystack. The fire was among dozens started by lightning last week. Forestry and Fire Protection spokesperson Sam Harrel says it plotted in a limited-modified protection area.

“It exhibited no active fire, no active fire growth,” Harrel said. “It was just a little ‘duffer,’ we call ‘em. It was just a little smoke.”

Harrel says that changed Tuesday with the return of warm, dry weather, so the state began hitting the Lost Horse Creek Fire with water and retardant drops. But despite the attention, Harrel says it’s continued to burn through dense forest including large areas of highly flammable black spruce, expanding significantly by Wednesday night.

“Air attack was guessing that it was between 2,000 and 2,500 acres,” he said.

Harrel says crews are being deployed to work the blaze, and into the Haystack subdivision to assess properties for structure protection. He says Alaska’s Type 2 incident management team will be taking over management of Lost Horse Creek and several smaller wildfires burning in the general area north of town. Harrel emphasizes that many areas of the borough are under Level 1 or “READY” evacuation notices.

“We all need to know our plan for what to do if an evacuation is called for our area,” Harrel said. “If we have large animals, we need to have a plan on what to do with those. If we have a kennel full of sled dogs, you need a plan for what to do. If you’re a caretaker, if you have elderly folks who aren’t as mobile, need a little more time to get places…these are the things you need to be working on in a READY status.”

The borough is still in the process of ramping up services for evacuees, and Livingston says emergency operations does not currently have an evacuation shelter available.

“That detail is still being worked out,” Livingston said. “We have been in contact with the local Red Cross, and I expect to have a little bit more information about that a little bit later.”

Livingston says the borough has some capacity to help with evacuated animals.

“We normally would have a pet or livestock emergency evacuation area located at the Tanana Valley Fairgrounds; however, the fair is going on right now,” she said. “The good news is we will be able to accept and assist a certain number of household animals at the animal control shelter.”

The threat of additional evacuations is real. There are 140 active wildfires in the state, mostly in the Interior, and fire conducive weather is predicted to intensify. National Weather Service forecaster Dustin Salpzman says temperatures in the 80s and possibly 90’s are expected this weekend, along with southerly airflow and chinook conditions.

“And with that chinook flow, you also get drying of the air, which is really good for the spread of wildfires,” Salpzman said. “So it’s just going to be another one of those fire weather patterns that people in the Interior are very familiar with.”

A special statement from the Weather Service says the chinook wind will develop Friday near the Alaska Range and also push into the Tanana Valley. It says the hot, dry conditions are forecast to last into Monday before a slow cool-down begins.