Kotzebue declared a disaster Monday after a blizzard hit Northwest Alaska over the weekend, causing power outages and water service interruptions.
“We have so much snow building up within our city limits that it’s become a flooding hazard,” Baldwin said Monday.
In the letter to Mayor Moto, Baldwin said that if the “snow is not removed from the city in a timely manner, there will be extensive flooding during breakup resulting in serious property damage and a public health crisis as the city’s sewer system is overwhelmed with melting snow runoff — the city has no storm drainage system.”Kotzebue snowplow operator Jackson Snyder took photos Monday as he cleared snow in front of Bering Air.
To remove snow — with berms on the busiest Kotzebue streets up 5 to 6 feet high, and 15 to 20 feet on outlying streets — the city was looking at contracting solutions to ease the workload for their four-person operation, Baldwin said. The disaster declaration should allow the city to secure funds to hire private contractors “before breakup begins in several weeks,” Baldwin said in the letter.“Not only do we have a small team — a small team that works extremely hard,” Baldwin said. “We are inundated with snow right now. There’s nowhere to put it.”
The city was “unburying” some of the busy streets as of Monday, Baldwin said. With high-traffic streets reduced to one lane, city officials asked residents to avoid travel.
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