After asking Iditarod to bypass Shaktoolik over coronavirus fears, residents fix up a new checkpoint to shelter mushers

Anchorage Daily News ^ | March 15, 2020 | Blair Braverman

[Morgana]

On Friday, the Iditarod announced that mushers would not be stopping in the village of Shaktoolik, a key source of shelter along the notoriously stormy Norton Sound, and would instead pick up their drop bags and straw at a hospitality stop outside town — without shelter, water, food or volunteers. The village had voted that, in light of the spread of COVID-19, they didn’t want outsiders coming in at this time. They have to protect their elders, and other vulnerable people, from the risk of infection.

The decision was not made lightly. A century ago, the Spanish influenza epidemic left only six survivors in the whole village.

But some people started thinking,” said Lynda Bekoalok, a middle-school teacher whose husband’s great-grandmother survived the 1918 flu, “we gotta have a place for the mushers somewhere.”

“My husband is the vice mayor of Shaktoolik,” said resident Hannah Lynn Sookiayak, “and he and I were sitting on the couch, thinking about what we could do. I told him, I’m just going to post on Facebook asking for help.” They called neighbor Eugene Asicksik, who plows the roads, and asked if he could plow a trail to the old village site, which was abandoned in 1976. Asicksik thought one of the old houses could be fixed up to make a shelter.

Before long, word of the project had spread, and about two dozen people came together to help, working 13-hour days to turn the abandoned house into a welcoming checkpoint. “The house was full of 3-4 feet of snow,” said Bekoalok, who has limited mobility and volunteered from home as a coordinator. “They had to shovel the house out, and they put Visqueen on the windows, so that light comes in but the cold doesn’t.”

[Morgana]

ALASKA PING

bypass Shaktoolik over coronavirus fears

[nerdgirl]

Thanks for the post, hadn’t seen it. I couldn’t believe they let the Iditarod go on as if nothing were happening in the world, people “elbow to elbow” in here in Anchorage a week ago.