Your and my favorite Alaska blogger has a heart-wrenching post up relating the plight of rural Alaskans. This is a disaster in the making as even more cold(er) weather is headed their way. As stocks of fuel run out, rural Alaskans will have to pay pay even higher pricesfor heating oil that is flown in. So far, the response from the state government is a giant "huh? what?" but Mudflats includes contact info for anyone who wants to and can help.
A Cry for Help from Rural Alaska. Is Anyone Listening?
Four days ago, a cry for help went out via the Bristol Bay Times. Many of us have known that residents of Alaska’s rural villages are having a hard winter. The weather has been unusually cold, and prices of heating oil and gasoline have been astronomical. Add to that a disastrous collapsing salmon fishery in Bristol Bay that left residents in that area heading in to winter with less than usual, and you have the makings for a humanitarian disaster.
So in desperation, Nicholas Tucker, from the Village of Emmonak sent out a cry for help. With 21 days left in the month, Mr. Tucker had only $440 left to feed and keep his family of nine warm, with heating oil at $7.83/gallon. As Emmonak runs out of fuel, it will have to be flown in, potentially raising the price to $9/gallon or more. While contemplating his own plight, he wondered how many other families of the 800 living in his village were having similar hard times. So he sent out a message on his VHF radio, asking his neighbors how they were doing. Twenty five answers came. Here are a few:
G. & K. F.: Young couple with family of five. Wife is unable to sleep and stressed out not knowing when they will be able get their next heating fuel. A 100-lb. bottle of propane gas that usually lasts four months is now lasting only two months because they use it to heat water. This costs them $200 every two weeks. They do not have hot water heater. Wife has very little income and uses $375, the one-half of her gross income every two weeks, to get heating fuel. She has no food for her family sometimes, because, she has to split the rest of what little is left for water/sewer and electricity. Gasoline for her 4-wheeler is very expensive. Her parents help her with food and firewood. They cannot afford a snowmachine or a boat to get logs. Heating fuel and propane is taking her food money away. Her added worry is that the village native corporation is running out of heating fuel and is being airlifted in. New cost is expected to be near $9 - $11 per gallon or higher.
P. R: Single, separated, with five children. (He chokes occasionally, holding back crying.) He and his children are staying in the same household with his brother’s family. Cost of fuel is so high and everything else and we’re able to get just a few things at a time. We have no other subsistence food left. Only thing we’re surviving on moose meat alone and it is almost gone. Everything is so high – only able to get little bit. We can’t catch up on our bills. We’re really hurting even we are given some from other people. Right now, we can’t eat during the day, only at supper time. And, it is still not enough. If there had been no school lunch, our kids would be starving. It is going to get worse in two weeks when our new heating fuel supply is airlifted in. Price of fuel will go way up again. I am lucky that the Women’s Shelter is able to give me some coffee.
A. & L. M.. Middle aged couple, family of eight. Family is buying heating fuel over food all this winter. They have no choice. Wife has a part time job. Husband’s health, including a bad back, is preventing work – had lost his last job due to health.
T. U., boyfriend and children: Having hard time getting food and pampers and is on-call work. Getting food from elderly parents. Buying heating fuel over food. No food once in a while and having to cook whatever is on hand like rice. Sometimes, having to cook only moose for a whole week because there is nothing else to eat. There are days when there is nothing for breakfast and lunch and have to eat only one dinner meal a day.
Hearing these stories from his friends and neighbors, Nick Turner sent a letter to the Bristol Bay Times; a message in a bottle, asking for someone to help.
The Immoral Minority has the letter here. Nicholas Tucker says
I am 63 and my wife is 54. For the first time, beginning December 2008, I am forced to decide buying between heating fuel or groceries. I had been forced to dig into our January income to stay warm during December.
Mudflats / AKMuckraker asks some great questions in the cross-posted blog here. Such as:
Where is our Governor? What are her priorities? I have heard her concerns about anonymous bloggers, about media coverage, about the legislature, and the gas line. I have seen a press release come out saying "There you go again" to the Anchorage Daily News. I haves seen lots of time and energy focused on how Sarah Palin feels mistreated by the media. But I have not heard one, single, solitary word about Emmonak. I have seen no press releases about what my state's government is doing to help its people in harm's way who are cold and hungry.
To read more about the going ons in Emmonak and read more about their crisis, check in here.
As mudflats eloquently states:
The answer lies, where many answers lie, with us.
Here's the info if you can help:
To help, please call:
City of Emmonak, (907) 949-1227/1249 (They will take donations by credit card. Please specify the donation is for heating oil!)
Emmonak Tribal Council, (907) 949-1720
or send a check to:
Emmonak Tribal Council
P.O. Box 126
Emmonak, AK 99581