Anchorage Daily News

Workers at The Dome had a brief scare Tuesday evening when the air-handling unit at the massive inflated sports complex stopped working and the big white bubble off Minnesota Drive started to deflate.

A backup unit was turned on and The Dome, which covers 174,290 square feet, was soon refilled with air, said Alice Federenko, chief executive officer of the facility. The primary air intake failed at about 5:15 p.m., she said.

"It's already back to full pressure," she said at 6.

Federenko said one runner and several employees evacuated the $12.5 million structure at the request of firefighters, who were summoned after the sagging siding in one corner began to melt on a light fixture.

The Dome's fabric -- a combination of heavy polyvinyl chloride and extra-thick tent material with 5.5 inches of insulation -- singed and sent up smoke but did not catch fire, she said. A small, perhaps one-square-foot, section of the siding was warped from the heat.

No one was injured and The Dome re-opened for evening activities, she said.

There were some frayed nerves though.

"It scared the employees, in terms of, 'Oh my God what are we supposed to do?' '' Federenko said.

Federenko said The Dome is equipped with two alternating primary air intake units -- large, gas-powered fans that both inflate and heat the facility -- and one backup. It only needs one to stay inflated. When the primary units went out, the backup unit didn't kick in automatically as it should have, she said.

In all, the 87.5-foot-tall Dome sagged about 20 feet before an employee manually switched over the air intake. Mechanics were on the way to The Dome Tuesday night to figure out what went wrong, Federenko said.

When fully inflated, The Dome is under 15 to 17 pounds of pressure per square inch.

More than a thousand athletes from a wide variety of sports -- track, baseball, soccer -- use The Dome each week, a manager told the Daily News last spring.

Earlier this month in Irving, Texas, a man was paralyzed when an inflatable dome that serves as a practice facility for the Dallas Cowboys collapsed during near-hurricane force winds.

Find Beth Bragg online at adn.com/contact/bbragg or call 257-4309. Find reporter James Halpin at adn.com/contact/jhalpin or call 257-4589.

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