Food has finally arrived on St. Paul Island after 20,000 pounds of groceries meant for the Pribilof Islands community spent weeks stuck in Anchorage due to weather delays.
Marissa Merculieff, an executive with the tribal government, the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, says the island’s only store held special hours after the food came in.
“Everybody runs down there as fast as they can to get fruit, vegetables, all the stuff we've been missing — especially eggs and milk,” she said. “Everyone was so excited.”
ACE Air Cargo flew five shipments to the island over the last week, delivering about 12,000 pounds of groceries. Residents say shelves at the only store are now stocked with milk, eggs and bread.
ACE also delivered about 5,000 pounds of backlogged mail.
“It was a lot like Christmas out here,” Merculieff said. “Everyone was posting about it on social media, about the plane coming in. And everyone was just excited to get stuff that’s been sitting at ACE since May.”
The flights brought some relief, but not everything arrived. Some freight is still sitting in Anchorage. And not everything that arrived was usable.
City Manager Phillip Zavadil says the store had to throw out a quarter of the groceries that arrived rotten due to the backlog.
Alaska-based Northern Air Cargo also helped deliver 9,000 pounds of backlogged freight to the community. Zavadil says the company only charged St. Paul the cost of fuel.
He says the city and tribal governments are working with ACE and the postal service for options to prevent something like this from happening again.
