Agnes Nunn helps Delainie Burford off a Grant Aviation flight from Anchorage at Kenai Municipal Airport on Tuesday afternoon. Burford, returning from Mexico, said the avalanches made her change her travel plans. "We were going to drive but it was dangerous," Burford said. "We heard about the avalanche so we decided to fly."
Story last updated at 3/10/2010 - 1:30 pm
Skies prove friendlier: Weather, avalanches make driving sketchy
Two avalanches on the Seward Highway north and south of Girdwood Tuesday morning closed the road from Anchorage to Girdwood and points south for most of the day and created a minor bump for local airlines.
State road crews had the Anchorage-to-Girdwood portion of the road opened by mid-afternoon and had the highway southbound from Girdwood cleared and open by late afternoon Tuesday.
The highway closure made for jam-packed flights out of the Kenai Municipal Airport Tuesday.
"It's been busy," said Ashley Fisher who works at the Era Aviation counter in Kenai. "A lot of Homer and Seward people are coming to Kenai to get flown out."
The Homer and Seward airports have been closed due to a blizzard that the National Weather Service said passed through the area Tuesday. Schools from Anchor Point south also were closed due to weather.
Fisher said the 12 flights out of Kenai to Anchorage Tuesday afternoon were delayed by an hour and a half to two hours due to the weather on the Peninsula and out of Anchorage.
Jason Nunn, station director for Grant Aviation, said that it was hectic for the small airline. It operates 15 flights from Kenai to Anchorage daily, with nine seats per flight.
"We're totally full," he said. "We're usually full anyway but not totally full."
Other than a busy airport, the highway closure to the Peninsula has not really affected business.
Chris Fallon, part owner of Jersey Subs, said that it wasn't a big deal.
"We might be a day late but that's about it," he said about their truck shipments. He said in the past if it has taken more than a few days for the roads to be cleared and for trucks to get through the orders have just been flown into town.
The first avalanche occurred at 7 a.m. Tuesday at Milepost 98.5 on the Seward Highway, with a debris field stretching 75 feet long and 6 feet deep.
The other, resulting in the extended closure of the highway southbound, was three miles south of Girdwood.
No injuries were reported in either slide.
State personnel installed changeable message boards at Moose Pass and at Mile 45 on the Sterling Highway to alert northbound traffic of the closure.
Brielle Schaeffer can be reached at brielle.schaeffer@peninsulaclarion.com.
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