On Monday, a fire disabled Emmonak's sewage treatment plant, leaving the city unable to provide sewer service to hundreds of homes in the village.
In the city you can see time passing as ice forms on the last open water of the Yukon River. It’s this battle with the quickly approaching winter that the city is up against as it races to fix its damaged water and sewer system before the pipes freeze for good.
Inside a modest home on a quiet snow-covered street, water boils and turns into steam. The house belongs to Yolanda Kelly, who’s heating water to bathe her son and granddaughter.
“I make my hot water on the stove, and I put it in the tub, and I give them a bath as much as I can," Kelly said.
When asked how long it had been, Kelly answers, “My granddaughter, maybe three or four days.”
The city does have running water now, as long as the pipes don’t freeze, but the problem is that they can't use drains and sewer lines to get rid of grey water and human waste.
“Well for starters we’re using a honey bucket. You can just smell that as soon as you wake up, and it’s constantly there," Kelly said.
When talking about how this makes her feel, she laughs a little.
“Like we’re living in the old days," Kelly said.
When she was growing up, her family used honey buckets, and she doesn’t want that for her kids. She isn’t the only one.
“We got no bathrooms, so we got to go back to the old days, back to the sixties and seventies," said Albert
Westlock, an ivory carver by trade who works from home and watches his nieces and nephews while their parents are at work. He shows off a fossilized saber-toothed tiger tusk and some mammoth bones. He likes old things, and doesn’t mind old ways.
“To this day I hardly ever take showers, cause I didn’t grow up taking showers. I only took hot steam baths. That’s what I’m used to.”
Westlock says that if the pipes do freeze and he can’t get water, it won’t be the end of the world for him. He could go back to hauling water and cutting ice from the river as they did in the old days. However, his nieces and nephews are having a harder time.
“It’s pretty hard on these little kids, you know. They’re not used to what we went through a long time ago.”
Family members are now making regular trips to Wesklock's steam bath. Despite his old fashioned ways, he wants the plant to start working again soon, just like everyone else.
Twenty yards away is the sewer plant. It’s dark inside, with wires lying exposed on the floors. It smells like burnt plastic and metal. The center of the room is charred black. Jamie Awgika, the employee who found the fire, stands in the ash, looking at ruined machinery.
The night of the fire, Awgika’s toilet wasn’t flushing at home, which tipped him off that something was wrong.
“Put on my stuff and came right up, and I noticed there was a fire coming off of vacuum pump number one. It wasn’t on fire, only the ceiling was on fire.”
“I was devastated. I couldn’t believe it happened. Scared, wondering what to do. I only had one fire extinguisher, and I used it," said Awgika.
If Awgika had not come to investigate, the fire might have burned the entire building and things would be a lot worse. But it wasn’t just quick thinking that brought him running.
“The first time, I caught it just in time when I came in," said Awgika.
That’s right, this has happened before. Awgika says this time was the worst, and his boss Arthur Redfox agrees.
“This is the third one we got in how many years?” said Redfox.
This is the third in 10 years. The manufacturer of the pumps is called Busch, a German company that Emmonak was in the process of replacing when the fire happened.
Pumps like these are prone to overheating when residents don’t notice vacuum leaks, but they are not supposed to catch on fire. They're suppose to shut off when something like this happens, but they don’t. Or it least they didn't here.
Despite the faulty equipment, the city is not pursuing legal action. It’s moving on, and it’s doing it as quickly as it can with repairs already underway Wednesday morning.
As the steam rises from boiling pots, and the ice grows on the river, and the sun sets on Emmonak. One can’t help but notice the passing of time, and the city's race against it.