A fire in Emmonak has damaged the local water treatment plant.
Emmonak’s mayor Wilbur Hootch, Sr. said the cause of the fire is a suspected pump overload. The fire damaged the main vacuum pump.
Technicians are working to keep community pipes from freezing. To do that, a main storage water tank must be filled. Hootch said a failure to fill that tank could be costly.
”If we don’t have enough water level in our 100,000+ storage tank, once our low and high pressure freeze up we’ll have a major disaster for the whole community of Emmonak,” Hootch said.
City engineers are currently ordering the replacement parts. If the parts are not available, the system may freeze. While water is still running, Hootch said only three of the remaining nine feet in the community storage water tank is usable.
Tuesday night, Mayor Hootch will hold an emergency meeting to approve the budget for needed repairs.
Tyler Stup is a reporter at KNOM in Nome.
Born and raised in Colorado, Tyler graduated from Colorado State University class of 2016. Majoring in economics, he sought a path that combined his studies and radio. When the opportunity came to do radio in Western Alaska he jumped at it the first chance he got. He’s been in radio for three-and-a-half years now and has loved every second of it.
