My Week In Anchorage, AK

[PoliteSuccubus]

Did you know that if you have cement blocks on your roof to keep it from blowing off the insureance company will not pay for damages?

I live in Anchorage, and we had a wild ride here.

ANCHORAGE (March 13, 6:15 p.m. AST) - Winds gusting to 109 mph at the control tower closed Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport for nine hours, and caused damage and at least two injuries Thursday in Southcentral Alaska.
Two Mat-Su residents were hospitalized in critical condition after being struck by a falling Chevron sign and a collapsed barn, according to Palmer Police Chief George Boatright.

One was a volunteer firefighter on the way to a call about 11 a.m. Thursday, Boatright said. As the victim and another firefighter were preparing to turn north on the Glenn Highway, a service station sign came crashing down on their truck.

Another victim was hurt when a barn collapsed north of Palmer, Boatright said. He didn't identify either victim.

At the Anchorage airport, operations were halted at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday after the control tower was evacuated due to high winds, according to Corky Caldwell, the airport's deputy director.

About 15 flights were diverted to Fairbanks and thousands of passengers had to wait for later flights.

"We had several thousand people to get out of here in a timely fashion. It was very challenging with the extreme conditions we had," Caldwell said.

"Large sections of the roof (of one terminal) were torn up or otherwise damaged," he said. That caused problems with broken water pipes and the heating system.

Debris scattered on the runways had to be cleaned up before the airport was reopened at 9 a.m. The airport alone had about half a million dollars in damage, Caldwell said.

Nearby, the Postal Service's airport facility had roof problems, and the downtown post office was also damaged. Both were closed Thursday.

At nearby Lake Hood, more than two dozen airplanes were overturned or twisted by the high winds, and several planes at Merrill Field in Anchorage were damaged as well.

The unusual storm swept down off the mountains, bringing unusually frigid air, said Dave Vonderheide of the National Weather Service in Anchorage.

"This type of storm happens every 20 years, 30 years," he said.

The high wind at the top of the 150-foot control tower wasn't duplicated closer to the ground. Ground-level gusts at the airport topped out at 67 mph, according to Vonderheide, though gusts of more than 70 mph were recorded elsewhere in the city.

The really big winds at ground level were in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, where a gust of 99 mph was recorded at a fire station that also serves as an emergency operations center halfway between Palmer and Wasilla.

That station was evacuated after the winds damaged the roof and a generator failed. Gusts to 75 mph were recorded there late Thursday afternoon, after workers were moved out, and another surge was expected Thursday night, Vonderheide said.

A wind-fed fire near the Alaska State Fair grounds closed the Glenn Highway for several hours. The road was reopened early Thursday morning, but firefighters were still mopping up Thursday afternoon, said Palmer Police Chief Boatright. Several outbuildings were destroyed by that fire.

Electric service was interrupted to thousands of residents in Anchorage and the Mat-Su area, with as many as 6,000 Chugach Electric Association customers without power at one time, according to Patti Bogan of Chugach.

In the Mat-Su, about 2,000 homes and businesses were without power Thursday afternoon as crews fixed one line only to have a tree branch knock out another somewhere else, said Bruce Scott of Matanuska Electric Association.

In Mat-Su and Anchorage, roadsides were littered with branches and twigs, plastic sleds and five-gallon buckets. Plastic garbage bags fluttered from trees and brush across the region.

Schools in the Mat-Su Borough were closed on Thursday, and officials said there would be no school Friday either.

 

[Lost Cause]

How'd you fare?........

Hope you didn't lose any property.
Did you have electricity, and such?
When could you go back outside, when it was 60mph?
Let us know.

 

[PoliteSuccubus]

At my home we did very well, bits of my roof are now in my yard, our power didn't go out, but our internet did. We had to close my work on Thrusday. Somehow air pressure burst pipes all over town.


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Debris sails down Forth Avenue and covers much of the sidewalk during the windstorm late Wednesday. (Photo by Marc Lester / Anchorage Daily News)


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A crew from Gage Tree Service works on removing an 80-foot spruce tree that fell on the residence at 3403 Lois Drive in Spenard. Resident John Jimenez said that he and his wife, and their 2-year-old daughter, were eating dinner when the tree crashed down Wednesday evening. (Photo by Jim Lavrakas/Anchorage Daily News)


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The roof torn off and her home destroyed, Ella Sampley, right, is comforted by her daughter-in-law Angela Sampley at the Dimond Estates trailer Ella has lived in for 26 years. The elder sampley had her coat on, ready to flee, and watched as the roof flexed and then pulled loose in high winds around 10:45 Wednesday night. "It was just unreal, just crazy", she said. The roof peeled off, landing on the trailer next door, and in the darkness "I'm seeing the moon and stars". (Photo by Jim Lavrakas / Anchorage Daily News)

 

[Lost Cause]

I'm happy you stayed warm and uninjured..

I heard a guy on the radio tell that he had no power for a week, but luckily, he had a portable generator. It's funny that in the lower 48, if Boston gets 1/4 of it's power out, it's on CNN for the next three days. Was this blast of air a historical common event, or a freak blast? I don't remember Alaska having winds like that unless you were around the Bering Sea, or Aleutians.

 

[PoliteSuccubus]

It was our Twenty year storm, so they say, but I've lived here since '75 when I was a wee thing, and can't remember it being this bad before. This one was a "Williwaw", a cold wind from the North. A typical hard wind comes several times a year, gusting up to 50 mph from the South. That's called a Chinook.

5,000 people in Anchorage were without power for a few days; cops had down town sealed off against looters and for the protection of folks since not only was there there no electric but windows where shattering and all sorts of debries were flying around. Schools were closed, air levels were practically toxic and people with any kind of lung ailment were told to stay in doors.

About the worst that happened to me tho was you know those silver spinning things on the tops of roff vents? One nearly hit my car while I was waling to it. And two of my trees are destroyed, a birch and a pussy willow. Thankfully they didn't fall on anything important. However, this summer I am now motivated to remove all dead trees from my yard (I have three, and one of them is like 30 feet tall and next to my power line).

Thank you for your kind reguard, LC

 

[Nora]

HOLY CRAP!!!!

Well, I can tell you that the cement block thingy is just a "non-standard componant" kinda clause. But HOLY CRAP!

I'm super glad you and yours are doing well, PS!

That spruce was gorgeous, too.

 

[PoliteSuccubus]

Besides, I don't think that any amount of cinder blocks would have saved that ladies roof.

When I went to get my girl from work my neighbor, who's trailer is more exposed than mine, had their tin roof flipping up and down like a sheet of paper in a book.

In our home we have like 40 candles, 5 or so oil lamps, as well as other winter gear for winter camping. So, if our power had gone out we still would have been ok.

 

[PoliteSuccubus]

Bumping the pics up for the day crew

 

[thør]

but, if those cement blocks are "roofing pavers" then the insurance company should pay, because it's a part of the building design.......

glad to hear you faired well thru the wind last week......i don't believe i had any damage.....of course, now getting the generator hooked up is a priority......LOL.....

the huge amount of dust in the air sure made for some very fine sunsets.....

 

[PoliteSuccubus]

Weather forcast for tommorrow.....Snow.

No wonder Alaskans are resilent~