Ice-locked Nome finally gets tanker fuel

Diesel fuel, gasoline and heating oil flowed from a Russian tanker to Nome, Alaska, Tuesday, ending a suspenseful mission to supply fuel to the ice-locked city. The fuel started flowing around 5 p.m. local time (9 p.m. EST) Monday, after crews safety-tested two 4-inch transfer hoses with pressurized air -- "so just about sunset -- just in the nick of time to make things very dramatic," Stacey Smith, spokeswoman for the fuel transport firm Vitus Marine LLC, told the Los Angeles Times. Alaska law requires such pumping begin in daylight but lets it continue throughout the night. Nome has just 5 hours of daylight this time of year. The offload of fuel from the tanker Renda, moored about a half-mile from Nome's harbor, to a fuel-transit hookup at the Nome causeway, should take about 36 hours, Vitus said. The U.S. Coast Guard ice breaker cutter Healy, based in Seattle, had cleared a path through 300 miles of Bering Sea ice so the 370-foot tanker could reach the western Alaska city of nearly 3,600 on the southern Seward Peninsula coast on Norton Sound of the Bering Sea. The voyage was the first attempt ever to supply fuel to an arctic Alaska settlement through sea ice, CNN said. The Renda traveled about 5,000 miles to Nome from the Russian Pacific port city of Vladivostok, not far from Russia's borders with China and North Korea, the Coast Guard said. Nome normally gets fuel by barge and was supposed to get a shipment in November. But a severe storm followed by a bitter cold snap flash-frozen shipping lanes, preventing that, The Nome Nugget reported. If the Renda had not been able to deliver the fuel, Nome would have likely run out of fuel in March or April, Coast Guard Capt. Craig Lloyd said. But delivery then would probably have been more difficult than now, he told CNN. Barge delivery would also not yet be possible, due to bitter cold still expected at that time. The area is suffering from its most severe winter in nearly 40 years, with double-digit sub-zero temperatures and snow two stories high in some places. Temperatures were forecast to warm up to 5 degrees Fahrenheit Tuesday from minus 15 overnight, AccuWeather said. Officials had considered flying in the fuel, but that would have required more than 300 flights, each carrying 4,000 to 5,000 gallons, to meet city needs, said Jason Evans, chairman of Sitnasuak Native Corp., which owns one of two local fuel companies. It would have also added $2 to $4 a gallon, which Evans didn't want to pass on to customers, he told the Nugget.