Rufus on Grad Student Madness originally posted about this article about the severe hardships faced by the townsfolk of Emmonak Alaska. I just thought I'd pass it on.
Emmonak Alaska, pictured above, might not look like much, but it is just one of a string of small communities in Alaska that has been hard hit by what has been called a "perfect storm" of disasters. First, the salmon catch on which these communities are so dependent has gotten so low it has necessitated the closing of a fishery which was the major employee of Emmonak. As if that weren't enough, the Yukon River experienced an early freeze in late fall. Below is a picture of an earlier freeze which transpired in the nineteen nineties.
As you can tell by the picture below, at times these freezes can come about suddenly and unexpectedly.
Most of the time, though, they are predictable enough so as to insure timely deliveries of heating fuel. This year, unfortunately, the freeze occurred too early for the usual deliveries by river, therefore forcing deliveries by air lift, which caused an exponential increase in the cost of the fuels to the extent that people found themselves paying hundreds of dollars for two weeks worth of heating fuel.
Now, roughly ninety percent of the community of Emmonak is drawing food stamps. Community leaders have urged Governor Palin to declare the entire region a disaster area, but this takes time for some reason which I'm not sure I understand. Evidently there is a bureaucratic demand that a significant amount of the population must be demonstrated to be beyond help from any other source. State officials have visited the area and attended a town hall meeting to gauge the needs of the community, which does seem to be in dire straights. Yet, according to one official in attendance, the Governor simply can't step outside her office and declare an emergency. To the outrage of many of the affected townsfolk, it was explained that these things take time, a commodity of which they are in especially short supply.
In the meantime, here is a page you can go to if you might be interesting in offering assistance in the way of donating needed goods.
3 comments:
Palin should have the authority to save the community. She can get the media attention, if she is motivated.
She will get the funding she needs for the community short term, but there needs to be a long-term solution planned. She has to request the funding, she can't just arbitrarily order it from either the feds or the state. They need to devise a strategy to insure future deliveries of home heating fuel in the event of a recurrence of this type of event.
However, even that will not solve the main long-term problem, which is the sudden decline in the salmon population. There's not a lot she or anyone can do about that. That was what kept these communities going. If that can't be revived, they are up the shit creek. What else can they do?
My father's a lobsterman in Maine and he's been complaining about the catch for the last few years. I think they expect it to return this summer, so maybe it's not permanent. On the other hand, in Maine, they're pretty careful about not overfishing, and I don't know if the native populations are or not. But, if this is an abnormally cold winter- and it sure feels like it here- the fish might have moved elsewhere.
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