Peter Pan Seafoods plant on Alaska Peninsula devastated by fire

The 100-year-old Peter Pan Seafoods processing plant in Port Moller has been devastated by a massive fire that burned through the night and into Wednesday morning. So far no one has been reported injured, but power, running water, and most phone and internet connections are down in the remote community.

Chris Clemens skippers the fishing vessel Rough Rider and delivers his catch to Peter Pan's Port Moller plant. On Tuesday night the weather came up strong, as it often does this time of the year, and Clemens and crew pulled their nets and headed in to make a delivery.

"And on our way in we saw it on fire … the whole thing is on fire, and we pulled up as quick as we could to try and put it out," he said Wednesday morning.

Clemens recalls eight or ten other boats tying off to the section of the main dock that was burning, using their hoses to spray directly on the spreading fire. But neither those boats nor the plant workers on the dock were having any luck containing the blaze.

"We fought the fire for a couple hours … couldn't get a handle on it. It got out of control, and everyone had to evacuate because it was dangerous, and we were worried about the roof coming down on the boats and whatnot. And that was that … now we're out on anchor. We're just kinda watching our livelihoods burn to the ground, it seems."

Clemens said about a third of the fleet that fishes in the area is still around for the late Bear River sockeye run, and they had been having a good tail end to the season. He's not sure if they will find another market, or where some of the boats will haul out now.

A concern he shared with his fellow fishermen Wednesday morning was that what Peter Pan bills as its "most remote facility" may be gone forever.

Peter Pan's corporate office had not responded to questions by midday Wednesday.

There are probably 150 people or less right now in Port Moller, which has little beyond this seafood plant.

According to its company website, Peter Pan claimed land at Port Moller in 1917 and began building the cannery there, which is open from May till September. Until Wednesday Peter Pan Port Moller could process about a quarter-million pounds of salmon a day, primarily sockeye, shipping it out as frozen fillets or H&G.

Bob Murphy lives in Port Moller for the summer as the Fish and Game fishery management biologist. He watched Peter Pan's operations come to a devastating halt Tuesday night.

"The fire started kind of in the production end of things, kind of the freezing warehouse," he said shortly before 8 a.m. Wednesday. "(It) consumed most of the production facilities that we can tell."

There is no local government or fire department in Port Moller, but Murphy said the plant workers used a fire suppression system, water lines, and hoses to battle the blaze. But these efforts proved no match for the fire fueled by old, dry timbers from the hundred-year old buildings.

"(The efforts) went on for several hours before it just got so intense. And now you're down to where there's fuel and there's ammonia tanks and lines, and it gets to the point where it starts being very dangerous to be around, and there was no way to keep fighting it," said Murphy.

On Wednesday morning, Peter Pan crews cut the dock away from the shore to contain the fire, and it appears the remaining warehouses and bunkhouses on shore were spared damage.

Murphy turned on a generator to get basic service back for the Fish and Game office, but said otherwise there was no power, phones, or internet working in Port Moller.

In lieu of photos, which may take a while to trickle out to the world, skipper Chris Clemens offered a perspective of what he was looking at as they sat on anchor near the dock.

"It looks like a skeleton of a building, and it's smoking. There's a tender tied up to it, a large Bering Sea crabber. And guys are still tying up their small boats, trying to fight the fire. But I think it's reached its last point; I don't think it's going to get any worse," he said.

Clemens suspects the fishing season for most there will be over, because even if they find another buyer, Peter Pan was taking care of all their support services in this remote fishery.

Murphy said he will continue to publish catch and escapement numbers and manage the Area M North Peninsula fisheries, including at Bear River, regardless of whether any of the fleet can continue to fish.

"I have no idea what's going to happen, but they will not be processing fish at the Port Moller plant, that's for sure," he said.

This story was republished with permission from KDLG in Dillingham.