Degrading permafrost likely caused Diomede city building’s collapse
The Diomede city office building is in the process of being stabilized after a team of engineers arrived on the island on Sunday, Dec. 3 to assess the structural integrity of the affected buildings.
A week earlier, the city building slid off its foundation and came to rest with its weight pressed against the adjacent school building. At first it was thought the foundational stilts were rotted out, but the visiting engineers didn’t see any rot on the wood and instead suspect melting permafrost as the culprit that destabilized the building’s foundation.
As the weight of the leaning city building pushed on the school building, the integrity of the school building was questionable, prompting the evacuation of the school and the living quarters of the teachers. Since there is no overflow housing available on the island, the four teachers, the principal as well as three children of one teacher were flown off the island last week.
School was out last week and restarted on Monday via online homeschooling.
According to Bering Strait School District Superintendent Susan Nedza, the teachers had to be placed within the vast school district where teacher housing was available: two are in Gambell, two are in Teller and one teacher is in Shaktoolik. Nedza said the students and teachers were supplied with Chromebooks and Diomede’s kindergarten through high school students receive instruction online for the duration of the school closure. Frances Ozenna, parent as well as incident commander for the emergency, said that all of the 20 students’ families are luckily connected via Starlink to the internet, to receive online instructions by their own teachers. Kids younger than kindergarten are being taught by relatives, since Diomede didn’t have a Headstart program in nearly two decades,
On Sunday, a multi-agency team arrived on Diomede to assess the buildings, including Sean McKnight, a professional engineer and director of transportation with Kawerak Inc., Orville Ahkinga Jr., two engineers with the Alaska Dept. of Transporta