Zimovia Highway is a road that runs across the west coast of Wrangell Island for 14 miles, featuring high mountain slopes one side and the ocean on the other.
A lot of the homes away from the main road, are situated along the shoreline. However, there are only some docks. One of them is an incomplete retirement project of Charlie Hazel.
“At the age of 73, it’s an enjoyable task,” he said. “It’s not in the perfect shape. But it’s able to float.”
A few years back, the owner began making a long floating dock for his home. Inundated by weather and waves the dock requires constant care. The concrete has damaged in some places and two pieces are held together with straps made of fabric. He would like to build ramps but hasn’t got the time to do it yet.
His wife Mel did not think it was worth all the effort.
“Now this is an emergency line to the entire island’s shores,” she said.
A Landslide fell on Zimovia Highway on Nov. 20 and killed four people and two people missing. Since then the incident, the Hazels dock has been the best method of getting the supplies in and out. It’s turned their property into an emergency hub for managing and emergency relief.
70 residents deprived of internet access
The debris of the landslide effectively divided Wrangell into two. The north side of the slide there’s a town. To the south, there’s the self-described “out-the-roaders,” like Charlie and Mel. They are located in mile 12.7.
The 450-foot wide slide shut off internet, power and the main road into town and left the Hazels along with 70 others without power. Joan Sargent lives two doors to the Hazels. She’s been driven towards the south side of the slide several times.
“If there’s been a trip to Hawaii and witnessed the massive lava flows that flow across the road and they’re deep. It’s kind of is reminiscent of those,” she said. “And it’s movable but it’s a huge.”
From the road, you will observe churned earth forming on the pavement. It is covered by downed trees. The mud is extremely deep3 stories deep, according to Sargent’s estimates.
“They claim it’s still moving. It is possible that it will slip down” She said. “We don’t want to have this road to be open that much. We are doing fine.”
An ongoing need for fuel
The Alaska Department of Transportation started cleaning up of the rubble on Wednesday. In a few days, they hope to be able to clear enough to allow the utility company to restore the power. However, there’s no timeframe for when the road will be reopened for public use.
In the meantime all of the houses that are south of the slide can only be reached via boat. Most of the boats that are bringing them to the dock of Hazel.
fishing boats, Forest Service catamarans and local tour boats are all lined up to provide the necessities.
“We are able to bring in our supplies and clean up the garbage and take those empty tanks of fuel removed and new tanks of fuel in,” Charlie Hazel said. “Without an dock it would have been extremely difficult.”
Cars crowd Hazel’s long gravel driveway. The residents make up bucket brigades that help bring goods to the dock.
Most of the time, Sylvia Ettefagh is at the other end of the spectrum. In the morning following the slide she quickly got organized. She knocked on doors to find out what residents needed. And she’s worked for hours making deliveries.
“So this is my day starting in the dawn until it goes dark,” Ettefagh said. “We handed out medication into the darkness.”
A variety of items have made it across the ocean including groceries as well as pet food, water bottles as well as 40 champagne bottles that were donated to celebrate Thanksgiving.
However, fuel is one of the greatest requirements. This time of year, the sun has been setting just before 3:30 p.m and temperatures are dropping to the mid-30s. At this time of the year, a lot of families are stocked with freezers of seafood and other meats they’ve gathered throughout the year.
A majority of people are dependent on generators, such as the small red generator that is constantly hums at Hazel’s home. Following the accident, the city bought new generators and distributed them across the roads to families who do not have these. At any given time there are docks lined hundreds of Jerry cans.
“We have had three gas stops yesterday. That’s quite a lot of gas to carry all around ,”Mel Hazel stated. “But there is usually several people in a line and they all walk down to the bottom and pick it up and then take it away and continue.”
A brief history of slides smaller in size
Ettefagh along with her husband John Verhey have lived out the road, which extends beyond mile 12 for more than 30 years. Verhey stated that they’ve known for a long time that something similar to this could happen.
“In a boat, you’ll see the traces of old slides all over,” he said. “So this is definitely a phenomenon. It’s just that we haven’t been seen in the road network over the past 32 years that we’ve been here.”
And they’ve always felt that they were prepared for anything that could occur.
“There’s some of us that were in the area before there was electricity out in this area,” Sylvia Ettefagh said. “And the people who’ve been here for a while are used to being extremely self-sufficient.”
However, this slide has exposed certain weaknesses. Most consumers get their drinking water from what’s known as”the 10-Mile” Pipe which is a cast iron pipe that channels water from the spring from the roadside, around 10 miles away from town. It’s now blocked.
Internet and cell services are sporadic or not available at all.
In the years after the event, it was discovered that the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes established the Starlink wifi system in Hazel’s house, for smooth emergency communication. The password, which is taped to the exterior of the home is Wrangellstrong.
On evening of slide the downtime of the internet meant that lots of people weren’t sure what had happened to the lights out, until Wrangell Search and Rescue knocked at their doors.
“The way we discovered this was when the fireman showed up around midnight, around 12:30 a.m.,” Sargent told us. “They informed us that they were evacuating to the next location, which is to take us to Charlie’s home.”
The majority of those who live near the slide were able to escape using Hazel’s dock. Since then, the evacuees have been shuffled between the two locations to collect additional belongings or to look over their homes. It is believed that the City and Borough of Wrangell has also established an everyday commuter boat that runs between both the Hazel dock and the town.
As with Ettefagh like Ettefagh and Verhey, Charlie Hazel has been worried for a long time about a bigger slide, especially at mile 8. on the road. There have been numerous rockfalls that temporarily stopped the road.
“There’s every day, massive gigantic, huge, car-sized boulders falling and falling onto the roadway,” he said.
He claims that’s a reason why he constructed the dock in the first place.
