Anchorage Daily News

The day after a 7.9 earthquake throttled the Interior, jittery Alaskans there endured repeated aftershocks Monday as they sorted through jumbled homes and communities.

Roads were mangled, zigzagged with dramatic cracks, and entire slabs of concrete sunk. Transportation commissioner Joe Perkins, joined by engineers, flew over the damage Monday. He said the devastation from Sunday's temblor was shocking and estimated repair costs could reach $20 million.

The quake struck at 1:12 p.m., three miles deep, rumbling throughout Alaska and moving the earth in faraway areas in the Lower 48 -- including Ohio, Louisiana and Texas. Through Monday evening, 2,602 people from 112 North American ZIP codes reported the quake to the U.S. Geological Survey's "Did you feel it?" Web site.

It was one of the strongest earthquakes recorded in North America over the past century, and the largest recorded along the Denali fault, which runs from Canada through the Alaska Range and past Mount McKinley. It hit about 270 miles north of Anchorage, 80 miles south of Fairbanks, and just a few miles from an Oct. 23 earthquake that measured 6.7. It spurred mudslides, buckled ground and triggered officials to shut down the trans-Alaska oil pipeline.

The worse damage was reported on the Tok Cutoff, Southcentral Alaska's most direct highway connection to Outside. The road was sliced with gaping cracks. Some sections had dropped as much as 12 feet. The quake isolated Slana and Mentasta Lake. Both villages reported porches wrenched from homes, televisions tipped and shattered. Ground waves moved parked cars.

In Mentasta Lake, wells gurgled up brownish, undrinkable liquid. Propane barrels toppled over and oil and water lines burst. Foreboding cracks in the ground slithered around and beneath some cabins. Villagers said four homes were unusable. At least 60 people spent Sunday night at the recreation center, a large log building that seemed safe.

Even in a state that gets more quakes than any other, people were rattled.

"We still need a lot of water, diesel fuel for heat, food -- we can't get in or out on the road," Anne Phillips said from Mentasta Lake. "I feel totally claustrophobic, trapped like a rat. Last night, I was waiting for somebody to just fly in and take us all out. Every little sound -- we're running constantly to doorways. We need help."

Today the Alaska Department of Emergency Services is sending damage assessment teams to Mentasta Lake and Slana, and to Tetlin, Northway, Healy and Cantwell, Interior villages also hit hard by the quake. A liaison also will visit Fairbanks, the most populated town close to the quake. Gov. Tony Knowles could declare a disaster, which would open the door for funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for highway repairs.

The Alaska Department of Transportation reopened the Richardson Highway, though traffic is narrowed to one lane in several spots.

One lane of the Tok Cutoff was temporarily open Monday. The road is scheduled to be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. today, with a pilot car leading single lines of traffic through a 10-mile stretch. Drivers should expect one-hour delays, said Shannon McCarthy, a DOT spokeswoman.

"We've roughed in a road that you can get through if you are careful," Perkins said. "If somebody hit one of those holes, it would be all over."

A contractor from Fairbanks was moving in heavy equipment for an emergency repair job there. That should be done in two weeks, if the mild weather holds. But the strip will need to be rebuilt next summer, Perkins said.

"It is rather amazing to see the force of this thing. It just peeled asphalt up like it wasn't even there," Perkins said.

While officials ran inspections and drafted plans Monday, communities rallied -- whether it meant reorganizing bookshelves, comforting children or providing a warm bath or safe place to sleep.

"When this happened, it was just natural for everybody to help," Phillips said. "It gives us something else to think about."

Shortly after the quake struck, people in Slana flocked to Midway Service, a mom-and-pop store at Milepost 61 on the Tok Cutoff, three miles before the road closure. People flowed in and out Monday, bringing sleeping bags to share. Owner Jay Capps let stranded travelers use his showers and sleep in his small guest cabin out back.

"I had over a dozen people in the store helping me pick up stuff from the floor," Capps said. "Thirty percent of my inventory was on the ground."

Cleanup took 12 hours, he said. They filled two 55-gallon trash cans with broken stuff. Half-inch cracks webbed across sheetrock. The front porch shifted several inches from the building. Capps estimates his total damage is at least $5,000.

"We lost a 29-inch TV set, the VCR, everything was smashed," Capps said. "The only thing that stayed on the wall was the stupid gun cabinet. "We took a pretty doggone good beating."

Joe Riley swung by the store Monday to e-mail family and friends that he was OK. He runs a snowmachining lodge about three miles in from Mile 72 on the Tok Cutoff.

"At the lodge, I lost a couple hundred dollars worth of booze and some glassware," said Riley. "Just up at Mentasta Lodge up the highway there, I've heard their building is totalled."

The Mentasta Lodge's parking lot is reportedly knotted with heaves, the basement soaked with water from a broken line.

Yet in the quake's aftermath, the owners still offered free food and lodging to truckers Bill Miller and Billy Carey on Sunday. Miller and Carey were hauling refrigerated groceries in a Carlyle semi when the earthquake struck, pulverizing the Tok Cutoff beneath them.

With Carey at the wheel, the rig jolted like it had struck a giant frost heave, Miller said. Moments later, the highway ahead split at lightning speed.

"Billy, he hollered, 'Earthquake!' " Miller said. "He tried to straddle the biggest one, but the right front wheel got down inside it."

With its front axle straddling the edge, both front wheels of the Kenworth sheared off and the rig came to rest on its oil pan, Miller said. The load hadn't tipped or jack-knifed, and both men were OK.

After calling headquarters by satellite phone, Miller and Carey and two drivers from another truck walked a quarter mile back to the Mentasta Lodge. The owner welcomed them.

"It had knocked the lodge off the footings, and everything in the lodge was just trashed," Miller said. "But people were just so nice. She said 'We're all in this together. We're not charging you anything.' She was devastated too. My understanding is she didn't have any insurance."

Mentasta Lake's school suffered reported structural cracks in the quake. School was closed Monday and probably will remain closed today, according to residents.

People are pooling food, Phillips said. Some folks were talking about having a bonfire Monday night and making moose stew. Everyone has somehow been impacted, she said.

"It will take us weeks just to clean up the house and we have a small palace -- a little cabin with one bedroom," Phillips said. "I'm still shook up, to tell you the truth. I've never prayed so hard in my life."

State troopers only know of one quake-caused injury. A 76-year-old Mentasta Lake woman broke her arm after falling down stairs in her home, trying to leave during the quake.

There have been hundreds of aftershocks -- some beginning before previous ones ended, including a 5.1 quake that hit at 3:50 p.m. Sunday, said Alaska state seismologist Roger Hansen.

"Some of the stuff we cleaned up and put back on shelves, the son of the guns fell back down again," Capps said. "My wife slept with her clothes on and on the couch last night, and so did half the community, I think."

Scientific teams on Sunday and Monday took Global Positioning System measurements and placed additional sensors to monitor the aftershocks. Additional equipment was already in the field because of the Oct. 23 quake, seismologists said.

The Denali fault curves through Canada and the heart of the Alaska range. It's the longest U.S. fault where plates move horizontally, with land to the south hedging west and land to the north slipping east.

"They're a very interesting pair of earthquakes," said state seismologist Roger Hansen, at the Earthquake Information Center in Fairbanks. "One began and unzipped in one direction, and the second (large quake) just unzipped the fault in the other direction."

The rupture rapidly ripped east and southeast along the fault, moving almost two miles per second for almost 80 seconds, Hansen said.

In the end, land may have shifted a few feet along a 150-mile-long crack that reaches 12 miles deep into the crust. People shouldn't assume that other quakes won't happen later or hit other faults at any time, Hansen said.

"Alaska has more earthquakes than anywhere else in the country," he said. "This is a reminder that we do have earthquakes. Earthquakes don't stop. They continue."

Reporter Lisa Demer contributed to this story. She can be reached at ldemer@adn.com. Reporter Katie Pesznecker can be reached at kpesznecker@adn.com or 907 257-4589. Reporter Doug O'Harra can be reached at do'harra@adn.com or 907 257-4334.