The water treatment plant and dozens of homes in the Northwest Arctic village of Selawik are without power after an outage hit the community Sunday night.
Northwest Arctic Borough officials say the outage occurred just before 5 p.m. Sunday. Repair workers from the Alaska Village Electric Cooperative were deployed to the village on Monday, and temporarily restored power to part of the community.
As of Tuesday morning, state emergency officials said 150 homes, an apartment complex and the water treatment plant still didn’t have power. While many surveyed residents said they have a secondary heat source at home, four families stayed overnight at the local school.
The city of Selawik declared a local disaster on Tuesday afternoon.
As of Wednesday morning, state officials said the water treatment plant is on back-up power.
Selawik officials have ordered a temporary water supply from Kotzebue.
Selawik has a population of about 850 people and is roughly 70 miles southeast of Kotzebue.
This story has been updated regarding the local emergency declaration.
Wesley Early covers Anchorage life and city politics for Alaska Public Media. Reach him at wearly@alaskapublic.org and follow him on X at @wesley_early. Read more about Wesley here.
