BETHEL -- A fire that destroyed a Yup'ik charter school and damaged a boarding school in the same building on Tuesday is generating a range of challenges for the Lower Kuskokwim School District.
The investigation by the state fire marshal's office was cut short because of the discovery of asbestos in the building. The cause of the fire is undetermined at this point, an Alaska State Troopers spokeswoman said.
Asbestos in the old Kilbuck building, which dates to 1962, will dramatically complicate cleanup, district Superintendent Dan Walker said Thursday. The fire-resistant material is considered safe when contained in insulation or other products but a cancer threat when fibers become airborne.
The building also housed a district-wide repository of unique Yup'ik curriculum materials, much of them created by teachers and students for Ayaprun Elitnaurvik, the 20-year-old Yup'ik immersion charter school. The fate of that collection -- in the process of being catalogued and digitized under a federal grant -- is not yet known, Walker said.
"If you think about doing language arts and math and science in the Yup'ik language, it's not like we could go down and buy textbooks off the shelf in Yup'ik," Walker said. "Those were things we created. There's a limited stockpile of that."
About 300 students lost their school building, including 40 who lived in Kuskokwim Learning Academy dorms.
The small district is reaching out for help to rebuild, Walker said. The community stepped up fast with donations and fundraisers to help students and teachers, but costs will be in the tens of millions of dollars.
Gov. Bill Walker is traveling to Bethel on Friday to meet with officials, tour the burned-out site and speak with students, his spokeswoman, Katie Marquette, said. State Sen. Lyman Hoffman graduated from Kilbuck, which for years was Bethel's only school. State Rep. Bob Herron's children went there. All three said Thursday that they are committed to helping.
Bethel City Manager Ann Capela has declared a city disaster emergency, a step in the process for a state disaster declaration and assistance.
The school was insured, but it was an old building and the insurance won't cover all the costs of cleanup and rebuilding, Superintendent Walker said. An extensive renovation or a new school in the remote district has cost from $20 million to $40 million in recent years. Adjusters have not assessed the situation yet, but the insured value would probably be in the range of $15 million to $20 million, the superintendent said.
Two investigators from the state fire marshal's office flew to Bethel on Wednesday but weren't able to do much because of the asbestos and have already left, Bethel Fire Chief Bill Howell said. His largely volunteer department doesn't have a certified investigator and relies on the state.
School district maintenance workers on Thursday afternoon strung a rope in front of the school with danger signs warning of asbestos. The district eventually intends to fence it off, they said. School officials don't yet have access to the fire scene and dorm students haven't been able to see if they have anything left.
When the Kilbuck building fire alarms went off at about 3:30 a.m. Tuesday, dorm parents immediately evacuated the students. Some left in their pajamas and none had time to collect belongings. A few grabbed their phones, but others didn't even do that, Walker said. As news spread to the students' home villages, anxious parents grew frantic when they couldn't reach their children, he said. Staff members called parents of dorm students as soon as they could.
Walker said he got to the school within minutes of being woken up with news of the fire early Tuesday. Firefighters were under the building.
"There was a lot of white smoke," but no flames, he said. Initial reports said that the sewer pipes, encased in a utilidor to keep from freezing, were on fire. But Walker said he couldn't tell where the smoke was originating.
At the district office that morning, under the belief they were just dealing with smoke damage, officials began planning where to house the students for a few days.
"Shortly after that, somebody said, 'Oh my gosh, I'm seeing flames,'" Walker said. Thick black smoke began to fill the sky over the tundra. The fire grew huge fast.
"It became pretty evident that we had a major catastrophe on our hands," he said.
The huge mound of rubble -- what was the Yup'ik immersion school -- might have to be treated as hazardous waste and shipped to a special disposal facility in Oregon, he said.
Firefighters and heavy equipment operators essentially cut the building in half, creating a fire break that may have saved some of it. The district hasn't been able to examine sections of the building still standing that contained Kuskokwim Learning Academy and the Yup'ik media center.
Decades of work went into the Yup'ik collection.
"People have poured their heart and soul into that," Walker said. "It felt like a kick in the stomach."
Loddie Ayaprun Jones, who teaches kindergartners, is a founding teacher at Ayaprun Elitnaurvik, which is named for her. She has been teaching in Yup'ik since 1973. She created items like Yup'ik alphabet charts that may have been destroyed. Another longtime teacher, Sally Angass'aq Samson, said students had created materials, too. Some booklets made by people now in their 20s were still being thumbed through by her second-graders, she said.
The district is committed to both of the magnet schools, Walker said. Rebuilding will take at least a couple of years, he said.
Kuskokwim Learning Academy students on Thursday got back to class at a regional training center and on the local college campus. The alternative high school started with just a few students about 15 years ago, Walker said. It now serves about 125.
The district is working to collect Yup'ik materials -- flash cards and photographs, books and handouts -- from other schools in Bethel and villages so that Ayaprun Elitnaurvik, with about 175 students, can reopen in borrowed space on Monday.
Ayaprun teachers gathered at the district office Thursday to quickly re-create whatever materials they could. They also called parents to assure them that school would go on. Some plan to encourage the children to talk about what happened -- to help them heal.
People who want to help students with immediate classroom needs can donate to Alaska USA Federal Credit Union account No. 4431964 under the names Fredericks and Corbett or to a gofundme campaign. A Kilbuck Fire Facebook group includes posts about items needed. The Salvation Army is collecting school supplies that it plans to ship from Anchorage including notebooks, pencils, pens, scissors, rulers, construction paper, loose-leaf paper, mini white dry-erase boards, dry erase markers, folders, and graph paper. Supplies can be delivered to 143 E. 9th Ave. in Anchorage. The Salvation Army wants to ship items as soon as possible.
Note: This story has been edited to note that Ayaprun Elitnaurvik is named for teacher Loddie Ayaprun Jones.