KMXT 100.1 FM Public Radio in Kodiak, Alaska
The Coast Guard continues to search for a man missing from a fishing boat after an explosion and fire last Sunday night that has caused major damage to Whittier’s number one salmon loading dock.
KMXT’s Maggie Wall has this report.
Whittier Dock Fire
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At approximately 11:40 p.m. the small town of Whittier was rocked from the blast at the Delong Dock. The fire spread quickly engulfing a barge, a 99-foot fishing vessel, and three boom trucks.
Both the barge and the fishing boat sank at the dock.
City Manager Jim Hunt said it appears fuel fed the fire which set the old creosote dock timbers ablaze.
“I was in Seward when about 11:40, 11:45, I received a call from my assistant city manager, Annie Reeves. She’d also sent a photo taken from the Towers showing a huge plume of black smoke, that there’d been an explosion and fire at the Delong Dock, which is a city-owned dock.
The Coast Guard said the fishing vessel was reported to have two people aboard at the time of the explosion.
“Whittier Police Department was able to locate one of those people so we are currently only searching for one.”
That is Coast Guard Spokesperson Amanda Norcross in Juneau. She said CG Sector Anchorage received multiple reports of the fire. The first being a caller on Emergency VHF Channel 16 who shouted, “Whittier Fire. Whittier Fire.”
Mayor Hunt said there are a lot of questions that can’t be answered until the state fire marshal arrives to investigate.
The Coast Guard has enacted a 100-yard safety zone around the area adjacent to the Delong Dock.
Hunt said that once the fire marshal clears the area, engineers will be able to inspect the safety and viability of the dock which suffered major damage.
“2:30, 3:00 they finally got the fire out. It burned for a few hours. Hot and heavy. It damaged the dock pretty severely on the east end. It got so hot that the concrete turned to gravel. Which is pretty doggone hot.”
Hunt said the fire and the loss of life is hard for a small town to absorb.
“It’s just an absolute tragedy for something like this to happen anywhere. Let alone our little tiny community because it’s like a boulder in a small pond when something like this happens.”
Whittier has approximately 250 permanent residents which includes 60 children.
Like many salmon towns, its ranks have swelled by the hundreds with summer processing workers for the town’s three canneries. But the dock fire is likely to have serious impacts for those processors and workers who have until now depended on the dock to receive fish for processing.
Hunt says damage to the primary fish dock couldn’t have come at a worse time.
“All the companies here are bringing in millions and millions of pounds of salmon. And we are now at the peak and we have our dock down. It’s economically a little terrifying I should say.”
An MH-60 Jayhawk crew from the CG Air Station Kodiak, which is forward deployed to Cordova, searched by air for the missing fisherman but later returned to base to refuel.
Meanwhile, crews aboard the CGC Chandeleur out of Valdez, the CG Auxiliary, Girdwood firefighters, and Good Samaritans continue to search for the missing man.
