‘All hands on deck’ in Nome-Council Highway repairs
When Knik Construction’s Dora Hughes answered the phone on Tuesday afternoon, a friend was dropping off blueberry cupcakes and cinnamon rolls to take to the crew out on the Nome-Council Highway. East of Cape Nome, the road has been impassable since ex-typhoon Merbok tore up large sections and created a breach at mile-24.4. Hughes’ crew has the important task of getting it back open before freeze-up.
“The main goal was to get to the breach, cover it and put the road back in, and in order to get the side dumps hauling over there, we had to establish somewhat of a road from 15.5to 17-mile,” said Hughes, who is Knik’s Health, Safety and Security manager. “That area was just destroyed. The whole road was kind of bown out.”
The Knik team—which includes some of their most senior operators and local hires—is working alongside employees of Alaska’s Department of Transportation & Public Facilities, Bering Straits Native Corporation and Q Trucking. Drone photos showed that the team has already made progress filling in the breach.
“I think everything is going really well as far as placing the material and stabilizing a foundation for putting a road in,” Hughes said.
Hughes encouraged people to stay away from the areas that are still under construction. She noted that the road was “pioneered” in with limited four-wheel drive access between miles 15 and 24.4. The road was also closed before Safety Sound Bridge and beyond.
Knik’s paving road crew arrived in town this week and was scheduled to begin work on East Front Street on Wednesday. Hughes said that a driller and blaster will also be coming out to start producing more material at the Cape Nome Quarry as directed by the state because the road repairs had largely cleaned out the supply of armor stone at the site.
The crew is working long days with winter fast approaching, and this week’s forecast presented another potential complication. A storm cutting through Chukotka and moving northeast to the Arctic Ocean was expected to impact the region. The National Weather Service put out a coastal flood advisory for the Nome area, in effect from Wednesday night through Saturday morning.
Rick Thoman, Alaska Climate Specialist at the International Arctic Research Center at UAF, said that the biggest effects of the storm on Alaska’s coast were likely to be felt north of Kotzebue. But days of moderate to strong southwest winds are expected to raise water levels in the Bering Strait and Norton Sound for a prolonged period. Thoman said he did not anticipate flooding like the Nome region saw a few weeks ago, “but given all the erosion that exMerbok caused, my concern is that we might get erosion impacts that that we aren’t expecting because things were changed so much.”
Hughes said her team is watching the forecast and will be working “until either state cuts us off or the weather.”
“Right now, we’re just kind of all hands on deck,” she said.