Power was restored in Point Hope on Nov. 20 night after strong winds brought widespread outages to the village the day before and caused more than 200 people to use shelter services at the local school, city officials said.
The North Slope Borough village of about 780 saw south and southwest winds up to 52 mph with gusts up to 68 mph last Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service.
“High winds severed multiple power lines resulting in half of the town without power,” said Robert Rex Omnik, city council member and one of the local incident commanders.
The first outage happened at about 7:45 a.m. Nov. 19, and the city declared an emergency at about 9 a.m., Omnik said.
Poor weather interrupted flight service to the village, and the North Slope Borough wasn’t able to fly linemen to the village until the evening of Nov. 20, City Mayor Henry Nashookpuk said.
The linemen landed in Point Hope after 5 p.m. and by 7 p.m., the power was back on, residents said.
“We do have full power back, and looks like all businesses are back up and operational,” Nashookpuk said Thursday. “Linemen are going through the town to make sure all wires are still intact and to try and prevent it from happening again.”
When the outage started, local authorities — from the city, borough, Native Village of Point Hope and Tikigaq Corp. — opened an emergency shelter at Tikigaq School. They provided rides to the shelter, which offered cots, meals and showers.
Over 220 residents came to the school the first night for shelter, food, water or a combination of all three, Omnik said.
Good Morning, Due to the State of Emergency Point Hope is in. We have employees helping giving people rides to the school for shelter. Please call or text 907-346-7011 if you need a ride.
Posted by Tikigaq Corporation on Tuesday, November 19, 2024
Point Hope Clinic remained open throughout the outage but the phone lines were not operational.
The local post office, Alaska Commercial Co. store and other entities were closed for two days due to the outages, Omnik said.
The gas station was without power but the city and Tikigaq Corp. officials were manually pumping gas for residents who rely on generators.
School service was canceled Nov. 19 and 20 and started with a two-hour delay last Nov. 21.
By Nov. 20, winds had started dying down. The air temperature was around 30 degrees Nov. 21 by afternoon and dropped to about 20 degrees in the evening.
In other places across Northwest Alaska, Kivalina also experienced severe weather this week. Kisimġiugtuq School shifted to remote learning Nov. 19 and 20. School officials asked residents to avoid traveling the Kivalina Evacuation and School Site Access Road.