The Federal Emergency Management Agency is spending nearly $11 million to repair an airport runway in the middle of Alaska that was damaged by an earthquake. In 2002.
On November 3, 2002, an earthquake measuring 7.9 on the Richter scale struck south central Alaska. Now known as the Denali Fault earthquake, it created a rupture in the land for over 200 miles, caused thousands of landslides, and in some areas, turned the ground to liquid slurry.
That’s what happened to the runway at Northway Airport in Northway, Alaska, a town of 95 people which barely registers on the map.
FEMA wll spend $10,968,805 on its plan to repair (PDF) the runway and bring it back up to FAA regulations. While the state of Alaska made temporary repairs right after the earthquake, the repairs only partially opened the runway, and it’s too short to serve many of the planes which used to use the runway.
The airport, built to support a defense of Alaska during World War II, served as a U.S. Customs port of entry for Canadian planes entering Alaska until the earthquake.
I’ll let the new FEMA head R. David Paulison tell you why this town needs this airport now.
“The Northway Airport is critical to the well-being of the local community, and its restoration to full service allows the return of larger commercial aircraft,” said Paulison. “FEMA is providing 75 percent of this project’s $14,245,000 cost. The remaining 25 percent non-federal share will come from state resources.”
Yep, the town can’t afford it, and the state apparently can’t afford it. Not only that, but those 95 people are starving to death without the airport to support them. Yeah, right.
This smells like Ted Stevens.
Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works license.
Video published by this site is licensed under a Creative Commons Sampling+ license.
Bad Behavior has blocked 3432 access attempts in the last 7 days.
Facebook
Digg
del.icio.us
reddit.com
Newsvine
mark
Sep 25, 2007
well hello there ,its about time they have the money to rebuild the runway in northway ,this town needs the plans that make northway a popular place to visit and to see,with out the runway theres nothing ,no money coming in to the local community that depends on the aircrafts that lands there and the people depend on it also…i live in northway all my life and the runway is a very vital piece of land that we really need specially inthe winter where we cant get out and depend on aircraft to bring food and supplies in for the small town.So if you dont think this runway shouldnt be here cause you dont live here all year..here a runway shouldnt have been put in ,is tetlin airport .why? is that there?com on people that wann waste money ,there it is ..middle of nowhwere in a swamp and not one person in tetlin has a plane .duh thats money being wasted on stupid things..not one person know how to fly a plane so stupid is ,is stupid does..take care lets caht some more on this issue if u dare……..mark
QQ
Sep 25, 2007
If people would really research an item before they spouted off, they might find out the truth. Northway is still the Port of Entry from Canada and until this year, it was the only IFR airport in the eastern interior. It was the earthquake that destroyed the airport and it was an hurricane that destroyed New Orleans, what’s the difference. N.O. gets billions of dollars and Northway gets $11 million.
mark
Sep 26, 2007
hello again ,well no one like to respound to our two comments ,well shut up .If you live like we do and depend on the runway and all then you can talk . People that never been here before they can surely talk about things but if they never been here and look at the positive side of things that would make a difference in life and instead of looking at the negative side of things. like if you hunt and wear furs they call you names and if you dont well i call you get a life,people do live off the land and survive and people that dont well they cause problems for everyone else so shut up..like northway they only get 11 million wow this is a port of entry and on exit also it should be updated and done the right way ….thank god for people that believe for the right reseans and if you dont so what,we dont go over where you live and say “o my god “what is this they should do this and they should do that but we dont ,cause we believe in alaska and we live alaska life style the way we like it and if you dont so what? we choose the way we live and we love it, so bring on th b.s. and listen to the truth .
ph
Oct 29, 2007
I live in Northway and there are more than 95 people who live here. There are about 400 people. The airport is a busy place in the summer as it is a Port of Entry. It provides a lot of employment opportunity for people who live here. Perhaps, money could be spent elsewhere, but money is rarely spent in rural alaska for repairs of this magnitude. I’m sorry if people think this is stupid. I don’t.