Roughly 900 people were affected by the internet outage, which started on Monday evening.
Update on Jan. 6:
The internet was restored Wednesday evening, according to Nushagak Cooperative. In an update, it said technicians will have to bring the internet back down for about two hours starting around 9:30 a.m. to fix the internet tower's radio.
Original article from Jan. 5:
Nushagak Cooperative officials say the internet should be back on by this evening for hundreds of Dillingham, Aleknagik and Clark’s Point residents. Their internet went out more than a day and a half ago.
Telecom Operations Manager Trung Vo said two technicians flew up to the Muklung Mountain site this morning to figure out why the internet has been out since Monday evening. Once at the site, they got into the generator room pretty easily.
“They found that the propane heater was completely packed full of snow," Vo said. "They got some wind deflectors and other things to try to address that, trying to thaw that back out, and then get the generator started and try to restore the internet here today.”
Technicians had suspected that extreme wind chills earlier this week made the generator too cold to start. Vo said the generators did shut down because of the cold. But technicians didn’t anticipate all of the snow that accumulated in the building.
“There’s a vent in the exhaust vent from the propane heater and somehow the fine, small particles look like they flew in and built up inside and shut off the heater and eventually made the room too cold for the generator to start,” Vo said.
Roughly 900 people are affected by the internet outage.
Contact the author at izzy@kdlg.org or 907-842-2200.
