PHOTOS: A major fire at the one store in Stebbins, Alaska on Monday has left one third of that western Alaska community without power, and a community without a store or fuel, as winter sets in on isolated St. Michael’s Island on Norton Sound.
The village of Stebbins is eight miles north of the village of St. Michael’s, and 120 miles southeast of Nome. It is a Yup’ik Eskimo village of about 625 people, with a commercial fishing and subsistence way of life. The store is completely destroyed.
There is no fire department in Stebbins, and the fire spread to a nearby fuel company, which also caught fire. There was no one inside the building and no one was injured in the blaze, which is still smoldering at the time of this story’s publication.