People in the tiny island community of Diomede -- the one where you actually can see Russia from your house -- are stuck.

Roughly four months ago the weekly helicopter service that brings mail to the village of about 130 people stopped flying passengers to nearby Wales and Nome, a councilman said. There's no other way to fly in or out of Diomede this time of year, and boating nearly 30 miles across the sea to Wales, the nearest village, can be perilous in poor weather.

"A lot of people have been canceling all their appointments in the (Nome) hospital," Diomede resident Thomas Soolook said Sunday, in a phone interview from the town laundry building.

The passenger flights stopped when Oregon-based Evergreen International Aviation had to switch to a different chopper for its Diomede flights.

"Their aircraft is down for annual inspection and they discovered some major problems with it," said Carol Piscoya, president of the Norton Sound Health Corp.

That was in mid-July, said City Councilman Andrew Milligrock, around the same time he went to Nome for a meeting. It took a month to catch a boat back to town, he said.

Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, wrote a letter to Gov. Sean Parnell on Wednesday saying Diomede is locked in a "transportation crisis" and suggesting the state and federal governments split the cost of subsidized passenger flights to the village. Meantime, the head of the regional health corporation says help is on the way for patients.

Piscoya expects to sign a deal with Evergreen Aviation as early as today. It would allow for up to four patients to leave the village at a time.

If the corporation agrees to Evergreen's proposed contract, the service could begin this week, she said. "We have a pregnant mom that should be seen. We have some people that really need to have appointments."

The contract would last 30 days and would have to be renewed if regular passenger service doesn't resume by then. The flights would be for patients only.

FOOD, MAIL STILL COMING IN

Mail and groceries -- a loaf of bread costs about $5 -- still regularly arrive by helicopter, Milligrock said. "Everybody's OK out here, we haven't had anything major happen."

The Ingalikmiut Eskimo village is on Little Diomede Island, 2.5 miles from Big Diomede. The two islands straddle the ocean border between Russia and the United States. There are few jobs and in the spring, residents hunt bearded seal to store for winter, said 73-year-old tribal president Patrick Omiak Sr.

The community has cell phone coverage but not flush toilets. People come to the washeteria building, where Metallica's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" blared Sunday, to shower and wash clothes.

Fixed-wing planes can usually start landing on the sea ice after freeze-up, giving Diomede residents more travel options. But last winter, no one was able to build a runway because of poor ice conditions.

"It's almost November, so hard to say if we'll get an airport runway, ice runway, again this year," Milligrock said. "We'll find out in a couple of months."

And using 18- to 25-foot skiffs to leave the village isn't always an option.

After the passenger flights halted this summer, a group of teachers headed to Diomede by boat to start the school year, Piscoya said. "They had to wait 16 hours in the ocean trying to land in the rough seas."

Normally Evergreen uses a twin-engine helicopter to make weekly flights to Diomede, residents said. When space was available, you could buy a $320, one-way ticket to the regional shopping hub of Nome.

According to Begich, the single-engine copter that replaced it can't take passengers over the ocean.

Milligrock thinks that's because aviation rules requires aircraft that fly over the ocean to have two engines in case one fails. A regional FAA spokesman couldn't immediately confirm that rule Sunday night.

An Evergreen official in Anchorage did not immediately return a call for comment.

Piscoya said Evergreen would use the single-engine helicopter to carry patients if both sides agree to the contract. The patients would have to sign a liability waiver, she said.

The Norton Sound Health Corp. board has approved a resolution asking the state to declare a disaster in Diomede because of the frozen flights, she said.

State troopers, the Alaska Air Guard and Coast Guard are prepared to help if there's an emergency on the island, said Parnell spokeswoman Sharon Leighow. The governor's deputy chief of staff plans to talk to Diomede and regional officials this week about how to solve the travel woes, she said.

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