2000 was a year of extremes

By DOUG O'HARRA
Daily News reporter

We might remember 2000 for its extremes. The year began with the fear of universal computer meltdown from the Y2K bug, even as thousands of people gathered for the biggest New Year's Eve celebration in Anchorage history. But within weeks, the region got slammed by real trouble. A winter storm brought hurricane-force winds, unstable snow and avalanches. People died, and property damage topped $16 million.

These contrasting events may seem long gone, but we can bring them back with pictures by Daily News photographers, snatching the color of human antics and the shadow of nature's fury. We're publishing a few of our best photos here, in our Year in Pictures special section.

A year ago, a bomb threat shoved revelers out of the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts downtown moments before midnight. Our photographer caught them regrouping in the frigid night and drumming in the first moments of 2000. Weeks later, the same photographer shot rescuers digging out victims of a Cordova avalanche. We shot the splintered remnants of shattered power poles along the Seward Highway and the rumbling parade of loaders cleaning up the mess.

Their work didn't stop there. Our nine staff shooters and two editors fanned out across the state, bringing a collective 120 years of Daily News experience to the viewfinder. They caught people at work and play. They followed dog mushers down the frozen Yukon River, then rode on fuel barges along the same stretch after spring melted the ice. They shot the grandeur of a glacial valley rising above the Tatshenshini-Alsek river system as well as the cloistered intimacy of an airliner's cockpit.

They traveled to Hong Kong to document Anchorage's growing role in global shipping and to Molokai to chase down local athletes skiing on sand. They worked the North Slope oil fields when the wind chill factor hit 70 below, and they observed girls primping for high school homecoming in a stuffy hallway. They traveled to Kotzebue and Barrow and Paxson and Juneau, to Dutch Harbor and Prince William Sound, to the Arctic's bleak coast and the Interior's snowy mountains.

By early last month, they had returned from about 3,000 assignments with 6,000 rolls of film containing at least 216,000 Alaska moments. Here are 55. Let them remind you of the year.

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