The flood of 2006

August 19, 2006 was almost the end of the world...ok, not the end of the world, but Alaska almost disappeared underwater. Either that or it was time to start building an ark and collecting animals. I knew it was going to be quite a day when I walked upstairs that morning and heard my boss on the phone saying "well, what kind of whale was it?" Yeah, the ship hit a whale and it was STUCK to the front of the boat.

I was spending my usual Saturday at the airport getting crabby old people on buses to Seward, while the state was flooding. I thought I had it bad when 50 people were going to show up at 5:00pm (we have to send the last bus to Seward by then or they will miss the ship). My boss informed me we would be holding the bus for them as well as the ship. One disaster after another led to the last bus leaving at 6:50pm. When I got back to the office, I realized that was the least of our problems. The road from Talkeetna to Denali was closed because Troublesome Creek flooded and washed out the bridge (go figure that Troublesome Creek would be the "troubled" area). We had guests from Alyeska to Talkeetna that were going to need places to stay and new tour patterns. 40 hours in three days and we got everyone where they needed to go. We ended up sending 4 tours worth of people on the Richardson Highway to Fairbanks, turning a six hour drive into 14+ hours of driving. We put 112 people on a train that only holds 65, and we made 380 turkey sandwiches to send with people on their excessively long coach ride. Not to mention the fact that on Sunday night the phones went out in Talkeetna and we had no way of telling the drivers and tour directors what odd route they would be taking the next day. Luckily one of our employees was at her mom's cabin out in that direction and had cell service, so she called the office and then drove to Talkeetna to relay our messages. It was an interesting few days...but we all came out of it alive, and a little wet.