Fall Blast 2004!!!

0Josh • 20th Oct 2004 • blog entries, nome., station life

Tuesday I was happy to see that my alarm clock was still operating, and that the power had not gone out again. I headed over to the station around 6:30, and right as we were getting ready to go on the air at 7, the power shut off. The next few hours would be insane with people calling in with cancelled school reports and other various closures. We were also out of power, so at times (after our battery backups died) we would be off air.
Once the sun came out (around 10:30) Jerry, Neil and I decided to go check out all the damage around town. We found out that the ocean was coming over the seawall, and that most of downtown was flooding. We saw some pretty amazing things and luckily had our cameras with us. One of the most amazing things was a cargo container being pushed up into a building, and seeing the waves break upon it. Over at the station, power came back on but it was still out at the transmitter site, it had been turned off because there was a propane leak on front street and they wanted to make sure nothing was going to spark it off. It was pretty insane outside, with 40-45mph winds and gusts up to 60mph. We found out that it is not uncommon to have strong winds like this in Nome; however it usually happens during the winter when the sea is frozen, so there isn’t as much effect on the city. They said this storm rivaled only a storm from 1974 that changed the face of downtown Nome. Luckily things didn’t get quite that damaged this time, however I’m excited to go down soon and see what happened. When we were walking around yesterday they weren’t letting anyone in the area because of the risk of explosion. We recorded our show with the Sommermans again Tuesday evening, I still was smoking another set of salmon, and again, we played spades while listening to “the edge”. See pictures of the storm by (clicking here)

It was great to have the Sommermans here for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. They were able to spend lots of time with us, seeing everything in our routine here. And it was really fun to have them on the air with us for two nights!