The Kenai Peninsula is still working to return life to normal following Sunday morning’s 7.1 magnitude earthquake. The Red Cross Shelter has been closed as families were placed in hotels and others allowed to return home.
Sergeant First Class Albert Burns with the Alaska Army National Guard says the shelter at the armory was officially shut down by Red Cross at 1:00 pm.
Burns: “They’re getting them hotel rooms and stuff like that and then [Red Cross] is working with Love Inc. to find a permanent solution.”
The facility will remain open for the rest of the day with snacks available until around 4:30 pm for anyone who needs them.
If anyone else needs Red Cross assistance, the number to call is 907-646-5401.
ENSTAR crews have been working with residents of Lilac Lane throughout the night and into today to reignite natural gas on the properties affected by yesterday’s earthquake and subsequent fires.
Spokeswoman Lindsay Hobson with ENSTAR…
Hobson: “We had 24 relights, four of those were the structures lost in the fires so we have eight relights left and three of which we are working on this morning because there is a concentration of gas around the foundation. The other five it’s just a matter of they have to be home to have service restored. We had ENSTAR personnel working on relights through 2:30 this morning.”
It’s still not clear how the first home on Lilac Lane caught fire, Hobson says crews are investigating.
Kenai Fire Chief Jeff Tucker says since the damage was so extensive, investigation may take a long time and might not yield any results.
Tucker: “The initial home that we got called to first, there was a gas leak that found an ignition source and started the fire. We don’t know what the ignition source was at this time but our fire investigator is going to go out there and work with ENSTAR and we’ll see what we find out.”
Whatever the cause, that first home led to eventually four buildings being destroyed by fire.
One was a rental property owned by the Dale family who lost their primary residence in Nikiski in December, after which the community quickly raised $25,000 for.
$2,000 of those fund have now been given to one of the Dale’s tenants to help find new housing, another GoFundMe account has been set up to help the other tenant, Janice Smith and her family.
Kenai Fire Marshall Tommy Carver has issued a very serious reminder for curious people to stay out of the damaged neighborhoods, especially to pay attention to areas that are barricaded.
Carver: “ENSTAR is out there on scene, trying to get gas pockets cleared out, they still have some high-levels of natural gas that are hidden in the ground and in the buildings. And in the few minutes that I was out there we had three private vehicles drive around their barricades. It’s clearly still closed off but we have people driving through, one of them was actually smoking a cigarette as he drove through. So I just want to get it out there that the Lilac Subdivision is still barricaded and closed off. There are some open houses on the ends that are outside of the barricades. Those people have been contacted that it’s okay for them to return. But I want to remind people to not drive around safety barricades because it’s simply not safe.”
