Soggy Centennial

In 1901, Captain E. T. Barnette pushed a cargo-laden stern-wheeler ten miles up central Alaska's Chena River, halted when the waters became too shallow, and established a trading post from which, with the gold rush one year later, sprang the city of Fairbanks. Barnette should have settled on higher ground.

Last week, after a five-day rainfall that saturated the so-called "Golden Heart of Alaska" with more than six inches of rain, the 200-ft.-wide Chena spilled disastrously over its banks and deluged Fairbanks. Floodwaters swirled through the state's second largest city at depths up to 9 ft., inundating cars, lapping at second-story windows, crumbling foundations. Before the rains abated toward week's end, some 15,000 of Fairbanks' 30,000 residents were homeless. At least seven, including two in the flooded village of Tok 200 miles to the southeast, were dead, and damage was estimated at $250 million. It was Alaska's worst disaster since the shattering earthquake of Good Friday, 1964.

Roiling Killer. Nearly every summer the Chena, which snakes through Fairbanks running south to join the Tanana, leaps toward flood stage as winter snows melt in the mountains. But this time, fed by the abnormally heavy rain fall, which in turn washed down summer snow from the mountains, the Chena became a roiling killer.

Over hundreds of square miles, central Alaska looked from the air like a gigantic paddy field. The Chena, whose flood level is pegged at 12.1 ft., on the fifth day of rain crested at 18.8 ft. at Fairbanks. The downtown shopping district was deluged. By Mayor H. A. ("Red") Boucher's count, 75% of the city's businesses took major damage. Virtually every building in the city was awash. Volunteers sandbagged St. Joseph's Hospital until patients could be evacuated. The Alaska-67 exposition, celebrating the centennial of the territory's purchase, was severely damaged.

The city's electricity, gas and telephones were knocked out. Rescue workers and airmen from Eielson Air Force Base relied upon radio communications --aided by Fairbanks' numerous "ham" operators. Some 7,000 victims were evacuated to the higher ground of the University of Alaska five miles away. About 2,500 were shuttled by air to Anchorage 260 miles to the south. Hundreds of huskies and other breeds kept by dog-loving Alaskans, left to survive on their own, raised an eerie cacophony of howls through the nights. As the dogs grew hungrier, humans had to fight them off with shotguns.

Coming Freeze. At the request of Alaska's Governor Walter Hickel, who shuttled in by air--the only transportation left--President Johnson declared Alaska a major disaster area and allocated $1,000,000 in federal funds to aid the region, which under normal circumstances would take more than a year to rebuild. Alaskans will have to do the job in six weeks. By Oct. 1 at the latest, winter's first freeze will come. Unless Fairbanks is dried out by then, the city could become a massive ice patch, its roads, water pipes and building foundations ripped apart by winter temperatures that go as low as --60DEG.

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