As some in wind-blasted Mat-Su finally get power, others continue to contend with bursting pipes and frigid cold

Jan. 5—PALMER — Steve Carrington and his family lost power early Sunday morning.

As of Tuesday morning, their downtown Palmer home hovered around 40 degrees, the pipes burst and part of their roof and one door had been torn off by winds that gusted as high as 88 mph at the city's airport.

Carrington is Palmer's mayor. He also worked for years for Matanuska Electric Cooperative, the utility working feverishly to restore power to residents around Mat-Su, where just over 8,000 households remained without electricity Tuesday after a violent, multiday windstorm hammered the region starting over the weekend.

"Yeah, that doesn't help a lot," he said Tuesday morning of the minimal perks of his job. "Even living in Palmer, where MEA has its headquarters, that doesn't speed up the process of the outages."

The storm, one of the most powerful of its kind to hit Palmer and Wasilla, pummeled homes and businesses with constant high winds and gusts measured as high as 91 mph. The storm damaged buildings, flipped airplanes and truck trailers, sent debris flying and left up to 22,000 households without power for long stretches of time with temperatures near zero. Some outages are expected to continue through the week.

On Tuesday, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District announced schools would remained closed Wednesday for a third day. A statement from the district cited "prolonged power outages and frigid temperatures experienced within the Borough."

The district's facilities department is working to repair "various building systems at a number of schools," the statement said. "The District also continues to monitor road conditions, with power outages impacting traffic signals at major intersections and sustained winds preventing icy roadways and school parking lots from being sanded."

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Damage to the Carrs grocery store in Palmer is seen on Monday, Jan. 3, 2022. The damage includes a missing portion of the roof, damaged signs, and water damage from broken pipes which trapped two vehicles near the entrance. (Loren Holmes / ADN)

Public works officials in Palmer and Wasilla reported too many reports to count of burst pipes from residents and businesses.

Palmer city manager John Moosey said public works employees are "working their tails off" keeping roads clear and trying to respond to problems.

In Wasilla, half the city's sewer treatment plant lost power, leading to problem with freezing, according to acting public works director Robert Walden. The other half was on temporary power. A steam thawing truck stored at the plant froze too.

Many of the calls coming into city dispatchers are about burst pipes, Walden said, urging residents to "really assess" their system before calling the city, starting with the boiler and pipes.

"About 90% unfortunately are where we have to tell them it's on their side and they have to get contractors to go in and thaw 'em out slowly and hopefully they don't burst," he said.

One of the city's main water reservoir towers also lost most of its siding, Walden said.

"We're trying to keep water running through it," he said. "But obviously we've never had nothing like that happen before so we're trying to figure out how that's going to affect it."

The winds had abated from constant high levels by Tuesday, but forecasters cautioned residents to expect continued risks from flying debris through the day.

Northeast winds of 25 to 40 mph were expected in the Matanuska Valley on Tuesday, with gusts up to 60 mph, an updated high wind warning from the National Weather Service said. Wind chill temperatures were expected to be 20 to 35 degrees below zero Tuesday.

Thirty people spent Monday night in shelters in Palmer and Wasilla, according to Red Cross of Alaska. A dozen stayed overnight in Wasilla and 18 in Palmer, with people trickling in Tuesday morning to warm up and charge phones. Red Cross officials said they're planning to keep the shelters open as long as there's a need and the Mat-Su Borough is requesting it.

Numerous reports circulated of windows and doors shattered, light poles knocked over, and home temperatures dropping into the 30s, with potentially devastating consequences for pet fish and houseplants.

As of midday Tuesday, just over 8,100 members remained without power, according to Matanuska Electric Association. The most — more than 2,500 — were either in Wasilla proper or the Fairview Loop Road area. Just over 1,100 were in Palmer. Large outages were also reported in the Wasilla-Fishhook and Palmer-Fishhook Road areas, Butte and several areas in the core area between Wasilla and Palmer.

Most outages in the upper Susitna Valley had been resolved as of Tuesday, though about 75 homes remained out in Talkeetna, according to MEA. A few hundred households remained dark in Sutton, Big Lake and the Knik-Goose Bay Road areas. Just over 100 households still didn't have power in Houston and Meadow Lakes.

Just under 300 households remained without power on Lazy Mountain, where residents have been told numerous downed trees were making repairs difficult and some homes could be out until week's end.

Lynn Fuller, a Lazy Mountain resident, said she lost the rest of her 50-year-old pole barn to the storm — the first third vanished in another bad blow in the early 1990s. Fuller said she was staying warm with a wood stove and a generator, and was making use of all the food and water she'd stashed in case of an earthquake.

"I'm using my earthquake supplies, my go-to bag and my extra candles," she said Tuesday morning. "So I hope we don't have an earthquake."

Meanwhile, Palmer Mayor Carrington said he and his family were staying at an apartment with power and checking on their home twice a day.

"Yesterday, I officially labeled this the worst windstorm I've ever seen," he said. "One nine years ago ripped off part of my roof. ... It happened again this year, except it also ripped my front door off my arctic entry."

The National Weather Service has classified the storm as a "bora" wind created when extremely cold air over the Yukon territory rushes down through valleys toward warmer air in the Gulf of Alaska. The severity of this event rivaled the worst ever recorded. Forecasters on Tuesday were still assessing whether it has become the most severe on record.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued a state disaster declaration for Matanuska-Susitna Borough Monday afternoon, he wrote on Facebook. Disaster declarations were also issued for the Upper Tanana Basin Regional Attendance Education Area, Fairbanks North Star Borough, Denali Borough and Copper River Basin REAA.