For the second time in 13 years, fire has destroyed the high school shared by the two Kalskag villages, where about 500 people live on the Kuskoskwim River.

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The fire at George Morgan Junior-Senior High broke out between 11 a.m. and noon Wednesday. The building was a total loss, according to Alaska State Troopers.

Students were evacuated and no injuries were reported.

Troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters said the fire may have originated in the shop area but the location had not been confirmed by the state fire marshal's office.

Dan Ausdahl, who owns a local grocery store, heard word of the fire over the VHF radio. He and other volunteers rushed to the scene.

"All the kids were out safe," Ausdahl said in a telephone interview.

But the school is a total loss.

"It's gone. It's all gone," he said.

Two troopers from Aniak responded to the fire and a deputy state fire marshal was en route to investigate the cause of the fire, first reported by McGrath radio station KSKO.

The high school was in Lower Kalskag, which is two miles down river from Upper Kalskag. The communities have separate elementary schools.

Troopers did not immediately know the value of the school.

Officials at the Kuspuk School District did not return phone calls Wednesday.

Temperatures in Bethel, 85 miles southwest of Kalskag, reached a high of 2 below zero Wednesday.

Fighting fires is traditionally tough in rural Alaska, where villages often lack training, equipment and water supplies to douse flames. Kalskag has a building that was constructed for a fire department but did not have a means of fighting the fire Wednesday.

"They tried their best. They brought a pressurized tank with foam ... and tried to knock out that shop portion where it started, but it wasn't able to handle it, it just wasn't enough," Ausdahl said.

Fire also destroyed an earlier George Morgan Senior High School in March 1995 and prompted a call by rural legislators for the state to do more for fire safety at village schools. The 1995 Kalskag fire followed a blaze the previous month that destroyed an elementary school in Fort Yukon.

Nobody was injured in the 1995 Kalskag fire but it displaced 60 students and caused $2.8 million in damage.

The community's fire engine 13 years ago could not be used during cold months because it sat in an unfinished public safety building, allowing water inside to freeze.

According to news reports at the time, the fire house building was begun in the early 1980s with a state grant. Contractors claimed the money was not enough to complete it and the community has not been able to secure enough money to do so.

Daily News reporters Tom Kizzia and Kyle Hopkins contributed to this report.

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