Rural Alaska

Check inside Bethel's burned school finds both wreckage and treasures

BETHEL – School officials on Tuesday examined the interior of the still-standing portion of the burned Kilbuck building, and they found it was more damaged than expected.

But unique and treasured Yup'ik materials appear salvageable, though soot-covered and smelling of smoke, said Dan Walker, superintendent of the Lower Kuskokwim School District.

Bethel crews fighting the Nov. 3 fire used heavy equipment to chop the building in half, a maneuver that slowed the fire. The section of the building containing Bethel's Yup'ik immersion school, Ayaprun Elitnaurvik, burned and was flattened, but a media center, the archives and the Yuraq room -- for dancing and drumming – were just on the other side of the fire break, in the part still standing.

An alternative boarding high school, Kuskokwim Learning Academy, also was in the section of the building that didn't burn down.

Walker said school officials were able to walk through the building for the first time Tuesday after getting clearance from an environmental consultant. EHS Alaska Inc. tested the air inside for asbestos and didn't find a risk, he said.

"I'm really pleased with what I saw in terms of salvageable items," the superintendent said. "I think the building's just a wreck, though."

The hallway was extensively damaged. Pipes are hanging from the ceiling or are on the floor. Ceiling panels are crumbled. Wires were ripped out.

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Doorjambs are framed by the imprint of smoke. But the rooms themselves look fairly intact. Books are still on the shelves. Curriculum materials are still in boxes, in a room set aside for archiving them. Some drums are warped, but may just need to dry out.

"The fire doors did a really good job of protecting a lot of the rooms," Walker said. "You can see how the smoke and flame came in around the doorjambs. Had those doors not been shut, then there obviously would have been a lot more damage there."

The closer to the chopped edge, the closer to the heart of the fire, the worse the damage is.

The district collected computers, some of the soot-covered books and some warped drums on Tuesday to further assess them.

There is some moisture in the area, which might have occurred through broken pipes or from leakage through the roof as firefighters blasted the building with water, Walker said. It's unclear whether the sprinklers went off in that section. Those in the part that burned went off first and may have drained the water holding tank.

Technicians are moving cautiously with the computers but may be able to recover data from the hard drives, the superintendent said.

Some of the printed materials in the media center – the school library – and the archive room are very sooty and the district is trying to carefully clean the pages so they can be used by children again. But it's not yet known whether every book was smoke-damaged and whether every page must be cleaned. The extent of heat damage on electronics and videos also hasn't been determined yet, Walker said.

The boarding academy students had a hydroponics program, and the plants appear to be a loss. Boarding students soon will be allowed into the dorms, which didn't burn, a few at a time to retrieve their belongings. The smell of smoke may wash out of their clothes, he said.

Donations of cash and supplies from around Alaska have come to the district to help the schools recover. The district is out of space to store any more donated supplies for now, Walker said.

The district is working with its insurer and environmental consultant to figure out next steps. The debris pile contains asbestos, but it appears it can be disposed of in a regular landfill and won't have to be barged away as hazardous waste, Walker said.

The district also continues to negotiate with Bethel Native Corp. on using the vacant retail space in its Kipusvik center to house the Ayaprun students for up to four years, Walker said. If an agreement can be made, the Native corporation expects to find another spot for its proposed liquor store, its board chairman, Sen. Lyman Hoffman, has said.

Lisa Demer

Lisa Demer was a longtime reporter for the Anchorage Daily News and Alaska Dispatch News. Among her many assignments, she spent three years based in Bethel as the newspaper's western Alaska correspondent. She left the ADN in 2018.

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