Alaska – Life In the Greatland or What to do if you don’t hear from me
(and have time to read)
Alaska - literally translated “The Greatland”. I’ve lived here for 25 years. During that time we have seen many earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, an epic wildfire, hurricane force wind storms, and weeks of temperatures rarely rising above 30 below F. I’ve also seen great beauty, wildlife, glaciers, pristine wilderness, Class IV whitewater rivers, beautiful weather, and a rapid advance of population, technology, and construction. When I came up the Alcan (Alaska/Canada Highway) in my 1972 Volkswagon Beetle we’d never heard of a cell phone and computers were just becoming commonplace. Growing up with Ham Radio and later CB, I never imagined a visual means of communication such as we have now with the internet. We have constant access to the entire world….. well… until we don’t.
Which is the very reason I am posting this page – if you are a client or friend and do not hear from me when you think you should, there could be many good reasons. Don’t panic! Your site will be fine.
The obvious first thing to do is listen to the national news for any major environmental events. If it affects Anchorage it will affect my access via email, telephone, airplane, mail, etc. Everything in Alaska comes through Anchorage – EVERYTHING! The news will give you some idea what is going on here for a while.
Volcanic Eruptions can and have taken down our electrical supply. So, as you can imagine, everything will come to a screeching halt. Read more about preparedness for volcanic activity in Alaska – PDF (of course you can probably only access that page if we are not under the influence of a volcano. See our latest smoking mountain – Mt. Augustine
Many things can bring down our electrical power and it is not uncommon for us to have temporary outages from time to time from wind storms, cut main lines under the inlet, etc. I don’t think we have more power problems than other more rural places in the Lower 48 (an Alaskan term for the contiguous 48 states). I would love to have an escape plan in case of long-term power outages, however that usually means air travel is curtailed and gas pumps won’t work so I am literally held prisoner of the state in some disasters. 911 halted all air-traffic over the US. Imagine what that did to those dropped into the wilderness on fly-in fishing/hunting/camping trips with no means of communication but the plane didn’t return. They ran out of supplies and some of them were places there is no way to walk out. Medical services were cut-off so important tests and medivac services were nonexistent. Tragic for some.
All of the internet service for all of Alaska comes through huge servers located in Anchorage. The Internet Service Providers buy the service and resell it to the public. Those big Anchorage servers are relatively well maintained (especially since the US Military also uses their services though not exclusively); however, there can be times when I do not have internet access or limited access. All of my websites are hosted on servers in California and Arizona. So, an Alaskan internet problem should not affect your website if you are a Lazytea client. Your email will also work just fine. My email will be working; but I may not be able to access it for a while. If telephone communication is active I will be able to access email through friends; but large updates to your site will need to wait.
Family will be notified in the event of personal tragedy. My family can be contacted through Deb @ txk9.com or Picaloon @ hotmail.com
I know many of you were clients in November 2004 when my house burned; so, you know I can conduct business from an RV or a burned structure. I have client data and websites backed up not only to discs around the country but other servers and drives. I commend our local fire department for saving my computer and peripheral electronics. I wish to thank all of my clients during that time for their patience and understanding.
We live in a constant state of preparedness here. We have back-up supplies and provisions and keep versed in our survival skills. I’m not sure how well the new residents of Anchorage are prepared; but we old Midwesterners don’t leave much to chance. We consider our dogs in our plans as well – they all have booties, food, bones, leashes, collars, emergency lights for their collars, meds, etc in the event of emergency. As I write this Mt. Augustine is belching ash into the air. While they do not expect a large eruption, I recall they did not expect the last large eruption. So, I am planning ahead.
Here are some links if you’d like to learn more about this Greatland or where I live in Wasilla which is in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.
